Example sentences of "can [adv] have be [art] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ There ca n't have been a toad . |
| 2 | I mean , Bohemian Rhapsody ca n't have been a picnic … |
| 3 | It ca n't have been the script , which tried unconvincingly to suggest multiple reconciliation under the spell of the Castello Brown ( the castle 's real-life name , believe me or not ) and then petered out , as if the adaptor had given up and left the cast to improvise . |
| 4 | Now , I do n't think we know what was the exact Sterling equivalent of the fall in our reserves during the last financial year , but it can only have been a minority of that total of £1and1/2 ; billion of public expenditure which was met neither by the product of taxation nor by borrowing from the public . |
| 5 | The South Saxons whose numbers we shall never know with any accuracy , built up a complex Wealden farming system , backed by a communication network that can only have been an extension of the lesser economic roads of the Romano-Britons . |
| 6 | ‘ It can only have been the smell of the mothballs . ’ |
| 7 | Between these extremes conditions varied endlessly , with so many towns sharing the social structure of their rural environments that cases of exceptional wealth can only have been the outcome of special circumstances . |
| 8 | The Last Supper can not have been a Passover meal . |
| 9 | From its easily-reached little summit not much of a view — therefore , it can not have been a hill-fort : in the tradition of Maiden Castle , or the great Heuneberg in Danubian Germany , this is not even a bungalow . |
| 10 | Yet often it can not have been the case that a recalcitrant trustee remained in possession of the property entrusted to him . |
| 11 | We have known for some time that this can not have been the case . |
| 12 | Pericles ' position is ( almost everywhere : see p. 126 on finance ) described by Thucydides as if his authority depended solely on charismatic qualities of leadership , but this can not have been the whole of it . |
| 13 | In debate with Trypho , Justin exploited this principle : because the almighty Father is transcendent , the God who appeared to Moses at the burning bush can not have been the Father but his Word and Reason ( Logos ) who is therefore ‘ other than the Father in number though not in will ’ . |
| 14 | Mr. Jeffreys contended that on a fair reading of the subsection it can not have been the intention that every one of an owner 's rights had to be assumed by the alleged thief before an appropriation was proved and that essential ingredient of the offence of theft established . |
| 15 | This can not have been the intention of Parliament when it prevented drivers from contracting out of their liability to a passenger . |
| 16 | For my part , there can hardly have been a day when I did not think of Eliot , when his growing prestige was not a source of immense satisfaction and pride to me , and when personal news about him , however brief , was more than welcome at such distance than propinquity without meeting would have been . |
| 17 | Nothing very dramatic here , then , but at least he was in the buying and selling game , not a wage slave , and there can hardly have been a time when it was not easier to sell the odd pork chop or two than it was to convince an employer that he ought to buy your skills as a craftsman . |
| 18 | Certainly he never made any secret of his Conservative past , having twice stood unsuccessfully for parliament among the miners of County Durham , where his air of a slightly lost rural dean can hardly have been an asset . |
| 19 | Though Ealing itself doubled in size between 1861 and 1871 and grew by over half in each of the two following decades , the first of these increases can hardly have been the result of the railway services although the later ones may have been . |
| 20 | There can never have been a field of research in which the likelihood that people would make similar discoveries almost simultaneously has been as great . |