$re = '/(?:Jan(?:uary)?|Feb(?:ruary)?|Mar(?:ch)?|Apr(?:il)?|May?|June?|July?|Aug(?:ust)?|Sep(?:t(?:ember)?)?|Oct(?:ober)?|Nov(?:ember)?|Dec(?:ember)?\s+\d{2},\s+\d{4})/m';
$str = 'the date is December 15, 2009
Nov 15,1909
Jan 15,1809
January 15,2009
Dec 22, 2014';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php