Example sentences of "[modal v] [vb infin] be [adj] [conj] it " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Ileana Cotrubas is not of that ilk , and many of her devotees must have been shocked when it was disclosed last weekend that her Covent Garden recital with Geoffrey Parsons on Thursday evening was to be her farewell British appearance . |
| 2 | The redoubtable Ethel must have been shocked when it was made clear she was down-graded to five , the same as Gracie Holt . |
| 3 | The noise must have been awful but it was sweet music to my ears . |
| 4 | It must have been nice while it lasted , Wexford reflected amorally . |
| 5 | I guess I must have been frightened but it all happened so quickly . |
| 6 | Before leaving the ministry in mid-1861 the sensible Evgraf Kovalevskii came up with a programme for reducing the volatility of the universities which might have been effective if it had been introduced gradually . |
| 7 | You 'd 've been alright if it 'd 've been a mass murderer slept for years . |
| 8 | Det Insp Jeff Crowther said : ‘ This incident could have been worse if it had gone on for any length of time . ’ |
| 9 | It 's a world away from J. M. Barrie 's classic story — and you ca n't help feeling it could have been better if it had followed that more closely . |
| 10 | What functions the AD1 and flanking repeats may have is unknown but it is not unlikely that one or another of these repeats represent functional domains . |
| 11 | The spending may have been great but it was not being devoted to thousands upon thousands of undeserving and feckless claimants . |
| 12 | But those who bought the book from the human interest angle may have been disappointed because it contains only a couple of references to my condition . |
| 13 | The machinery of employer reaction may have been rustier than it seemed to be . |
| 14 | This account of the treaty may , as Florence claims , have been a lie , but it , or something like it , could well have been what Cnut preferred people to believe , for he may have been aware that it had not been unusual within the West Saxon dynasty for brother to follow brother : it was the succession of King Æthelwulf 's sons in turn which brought Alfred to the throne in 871 , despite the fact that his brother Æthelred I had male issue . |
| 15 | Prinnie 's taste may have been exuberant but it was good . |
| 16 | The revolution at Northampton may have been different but it did have uncanny echoes of what had gone on at Neath . |
| 17 | This change in relative prices would have been rational if it had reflected any real improvement in the competitive power of electricity ( and there had been a continuing shift in favour of electricity for the whole century ) , but now the shift was artificially exaggerated by historic cost accounting in a period of inflation , and by temporarily depressed investment levels . |
| 18 | The gratitude on Jackson 's face would have been pathetic if it was n't repellent . |
| 19 | It was an enormously thorough and comprehensive review of the case , running to four volumes and more than 1200 pages , yet it would have been better if it had been half the length and taken half the time . |
| 20 | This public assertion of my childhood 's usefulness stands side by side with the painful personal knowledge , I think the knowledge of all of us , going as far back as the story lets us , that it would have been better if it had n't happened that way , had n't happened at all . |
| 21 | The only thing is i it would have been nicer if it had of printed . |
| 22 | This movement , as Rufus had no doubt intended , sent Mary toppling forward into Adam 's arms , her breasts lightly slapping into his chest in a way that would have been blissful if it had been allowed to continue but Mary , drunk as she was , had sprung aside , actually sprung to her feet , and rather late in the day hugged her arms across her chest . |
| 23 | It would have been nice if it had been a decade to the day since the dog died that I exhumed its skull , but in fact I was a few months late . |
| 24 | There is no doubt at all that without the peacekeeping force the war would have been worse than it was . |
| 25 | And it would have been good because it was per The only thing was he would have had to have gone up to and do a survival course . |
| 26 | Such a move would have been legitimate if it had offered the possibility of new kinds of experimental tests , perhaps leading to the discovery of some unexpected feature of the earth 's atmosphere . |
| 27 | It was set in a triumphant smile , a smile that would have been smug if it had not been so full of the purest metaphysical good humour . |
| 28 | Fifteen years … would have been ten if it had n't been a gun … poor creature … |
| 29 | Nor do I imagine that Number 10 would have been overjoyed if it had been some young detective constable . ’ |
| 30 | That would have been comical if it had n't been so downright offensive . |