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can1
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can1

can (kăn; kən when unstressed) verb, auxiliary

Past tense could (kd)

1. a. Used to indicate physical or mental ability: I can carry both suitcases. Can you remember the war? b. Used to indicate possession of a specified power, right, or privilege: The President can veto congressional bills. c. Used to indicate possession of a specified capability or skill: I can tune the harpsichord as well as play it.

2. a. Used to indicate possibility or probability: I wonder if my long lost neighbor can still be alive. Such things can and do happen. b. Used to indicate that which is permitted, as by conscience or feelings: One can hardly blame you for being upset. c. Used to indicate probability or possibility under the specified circumstances: They can hardly have intended to do that.

3. Usage Problem. Used to request or grant permission: Can I be excused?

 

[Middle English first and third person singular present tense of connen, to know how, from Old English cunnan.]

Usage Note: Generations of grammarians and schoolteachers have insisted that can should be used only to express the capacity to do something, and that may must be used to express permission. Technically, correct usage therefore requires The supervisor said that anyone who wants an extra day off may (not can) have one, or May (not can) I take another week to submit the application? Only 21 percent of the Usage Panel accepts can in the latter sentence. But can has a long history of use by educated speakers to express permission, particularly in British English. What is more, the blurring of the line between can and may is socially and historically inevitable, since politeness often makes the use of can preferable in the "permission" sense. For example, the sentence You can borrow my car if you like is a more gracious offer than You may borrow my car; the first presumes the granting of permission, while the second makes a point of it. Still, it is understandable that insistence on the use of may should become a traditional schoolroom ritual, particularly in first-person requests such as May I leave the room? since it requires the pupil to distinguish explicitly between what is possible and what is allowed, a difference not always apparent to younger children. And even in later life, observance of the distinction is often advisable in the interests of clarity. Thus, the sentence Students can take no more than three courses allows the possibility that a student who is unusually capable may take more, whereas Students may take no more than three courses does not. The use of can to express permission is better tolerated in negative questions, as in Can't I have the car tonight? probably because the alternative contraction mayn't is felt to be awkward.