MIGHT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Might

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/maɪt/ Listen

verb

May v. (past might) An auxiliary verb qualifying the meaning of another verb, by expressing:

(a)

Ability, competency, or possibility; now oftener expressed by can. "How may a man, said he, with idle speech, Be won to spoil the castle of his health!" "For what he (the king) may do is of two kinds; what he may do as just, and what he may do as possible." "For of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: "It might have been.""

(b)

Liberty; permission; allowance. "Thou mayst be no longer steward."

(c)

Contingency or liability; possibility or probability. "Though what he learns he speaks, and may advance Some general maxims, or be right by chance."

(d)

Modesty, courtesy, or concession, or a desire to soften a question or remark. "How old may Phillis be, you ask."

(e)

Desire or wish, as in prayer, imprecation, benediction, and the like. "May you live happily."

May be, and It may be, are used as equivalent to possibly, perhaps, maybe, by chance, peradventure. See 1st Maybe.

Might v. Imp. of May.

noun

Might n. Force or power of any kind, whether of body or mind; energy or intensity of purpose, feeling, or action; means or resources to effect an object; strength; force; power; ability; capacity. "What so strong, But wanting rest, will also want of might?" "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."

With might and main. See under 2d Main.

See images of 'Might'

Etymology of 'Might'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Might" Quotes from Famous Books

... the difficulty was to keep within bounds, and to select only such specimens as merited a place in a volume necessarily limited, by their celebrity, their wit, their beauty, their historical interest, or the light they might happen to throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the highest sense of the word, and possibly ...

— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... where glacial conditions prevail no such obliteration of the temporary lake-basin would take place; for however deep it became by repeated sinking of the upper or rising of the lower extremity, being always filled with ice it might remain, throughout the greater part of its extent, free from sediment or drift until the ice melted at the close of ...

— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... of freckles were known, a remedy for them might be found. A chemist in Moravia, observing the bleaching effect of mercurial preparations, inferred that the growth of a local parasitical fungus was the cause of the discoloration of the skin, which extended and ripened its spores in the warmer season. Knowing that sulpho-carbolate ...

— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... have decided that the Montgomerys and the Holtons might as well bury the hatchet. They're going to ask your Uncle William to my party. They can't stand ...

— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... assured, which is that the plantigrade foot is the only one that could have developed into a grasping organ; such a development being impossible to the digitigrade or the hoofed animals. One can readily see how the habit of walking on the sole might tend to a spreading of the toes, in order to obtain a wider and firmer footing. And it is equally easy to see how a free and wide motion in the great toe would aid in this result. The animal may have been ...

— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

More quotes...