Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[yoshi-pooh]

Hello, everyone!

I'm teaching English in high school despite the fact that it's not my L1.
I'd like to ask about how "may well..."is used in real communication.

Back in high school I learned that "you may well... " means "you have good reason to..."

For example,
"You may well get angry" can be paraphrased to "You have good reason to get angry", or "You shouldn't be blamed for getting angry".

However, I've never heard native speakers use "may well" this way.
As far as I know, when they use "may well", it almost always means something like"probably".

My guess is that this can be a misunderstanding caused by a mistranslation many years ago and it still remains in textbooks.

Do you think my guess is right, or "may well..." can mean "have good reason to...", even if the frequency is very low?

I'd really appreciate your help.

Yoshi-pooh,

[pinenut]

[LucentShade]

I think it's a mistranslation; if you take each word separately, you can get the "have good reason to" meaning, but I've never heard it used that way. The best meaning is "~will probably happen," as pinenut said.