Example sentences of "[noun pl] could not have [verb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | This monopoly was defended in the same way as that of the East India Company : the Royal Africa Company had to meet the expenses of building and manning forts on the West African coast as protection against other Europeans , and private traders could not have undertaken fixed costs of this sort . |
| 2 | Such depositional settings could not have existed under the temperature extremes and humidity ( annual precipitation minus evaporation of 0 — 1mmday ) simulated by the models . |
| 3 | Will he rediscover some electronic equivalent of the metaphor of the arch , and realize that computers could not have sprung spontaneously into existence but must have originated from some earlier process of cumulative selection ? |
| 4 | Rosa 's susceptibilities could n't have worried him overmuch where Didi was concerned , Luce thought waspishly . |
| 5 | The third parties could not have assumed that the Council was acting on behalf of member States . |
| 6 | Her eyes could not have bulged further if Werewolf had told her he only wanted her for her mind . |
| 7 | But as they walked into the dining room , which can accommodate up to 450 guests , their eyes could not have failed to take in the splendour of it all . |
| 8 | Coffin thought she was gallant and brave and loving , when caring for Weenie and her brothers could not have come easily . |
| 9 | Even the previous day 's visitors could not have landed on the same spot as you because the ice , and the herd , move many miles each night . |
| 10 | Boardroom upsets could not have done other than harm to the playing side of the club , he went on . |
| 11 | At the trial of the action the plaintiff conceded that the defendants could not have foreseen the precise chain of events which led to the explosion . |
| 12 | The rats could not have had their learning affected by the reinforcement on the eleventh day , it simply changed their subsequent performance . |
| 13 | But it was not a great deceit , after all , and perhaps one day she might be able to explain it to them , and apologise , but for the present matters could not have arranged themselves much better . |
| 14 | The kidnappers could n't have chosen a better day . |
| 15 | Indeed , early exchange activities could not have done , since towns did not exist before late prehistoric times , and in later times periodic markets and fairs provided many of the opportunities for trade . |
| 16 | Without this productivity increase exports could not have expanded fast enough to balance the additional imports required to sustain the 1955–61 expansion . |
| 17 | Many readers of our most respected newspaper The Times could not have disagreed more . |
| 18 | The relevant circumstances were that : ( i ) the limitation terms had nut been negotiated by any representative body ; ( ii ) the buyers could not have discovered the error ( i. e. that the wrong seed had been delivered ) until after the crop was sown , whereas the sellers were in a position to have known ; ( iii ) the buyers could not reasonably have been expected to cover such a risk ( i.e. of crop failure ) by insurance whereas it was possible for seedsmen to cover their liability by insurance at a modest premium which would not have put up the cost of seeds by very much ; ( iv ) the error could not have occurred without some negligence on the part of the sellers . |
| 19 | The Elector Counts could not have done otherwise even if they had wanted ; the people demanded it , and were not to be denied . |
| 20 | The new-style boards could not have worked as they were meant to ; and the misplaced expectation that they would have established industrial democracy would have collapsed . |
| 21 | Had such appropriately skilled ex-employees not been available in the local labour market , these organisations could not have entertained their strategies of using temporary workers in the first place . |
| 22 | Presumably the passing of over three thousand horsemen could not have gone entirely unnoticed , even of a winter 's night , but discretion in such situations was another and necessary Border virtue , and no alarm was raised in the hamlets and farm-touns which they could not avoid , however many dogs barked . |
| 23 | He said dogs could not have killed the rabbits in the way they had been savagely slaughtered . |
| 24 | For ‘ prodigies ’ ( ‘ Mr Binyon 's young prodigies ’ ) surely we ought to read ‘ protégés ’ ; and then it becomes possible to wonder whether the jocularity about bulldogs does n't mark a wistful or resentful sense that Binyon and Sturge Moore ( ‘ old Neptune ’ ) might have done more with their respective protégés than merely set them to sniff and snarl at each other 's heels ; to question whether the two senior writers could not have established themselves — at least for some purposes — as masters of ateliers in which the two young hopefuls might have enrolled as apprentices . |
| 25 | According to Mr Dieter Brauninger , an economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt , the newcomers could not have arrived at a better time : a period of dynamic growth , when gaps created by the fall in the birth rate in the past two decades need to be filled . |
| 26 | Among the questions to which he invited replies was one on whether tutor-organisers had done anything ( other than teaching ) which voluntary members could not have done . |
| 27 | ‘ Those 13 players could not have done any more . |
| 28 | ‘ The players could not have given any more . |
| 29 | According to Nelson , divers could not have reached the wreck without cumbersome diving suits and mixed gas air supplies . |
| 30 | Such differences could not have influenced the interpretation of our findings with respect to the effect of NSAID on duodenal histology , because of two main reasons . |