Example sentences of "may [vb infin] [be] a [adj] " in BNC.
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| 1 | It is very true that in one sense it must be implied that although there is no existing difference , still that a difference may arise between the parties : yet I think the distinction between an existing difference and one which may arise is a material one , and one which has properly been relied on in this case … |
| 2 | When told by them that the sales of budgerigar seed were disastrous and the market might easily disappear within a few years , Mrs Franklin came back with what you may think was a simple answer — but it was profound in terms of changing British public opinion — she said , " Breed your own consumers . " |
| 3 | Scotland may have been a remote country . |
| 4 | Diabetics tend to have higher serum cholesterol levels than non-diabetes ( Santen et al , 1972 ) , and the old diabetic diet only recently abandoned may have been a contributing factor . |
| 5 | Experts believe the anaesthetic propofol ‘ may have been a contributing factor ’ in the deaths . |
| 6 | A hospital spokeswoman said : ‘ The bacteria may have been a contributing factor in these deaths . |
| 7 | Johnny Marr 's guitar work may have been a stable basis of listenability but it was Morrissey 's release from years of repressed loser attitudes which made The Smiths so special . |
| 8 | This may have been a reasonable starting assumption for the initial round of forecasts made in 1985 , but it is not adequate now . |
| 9 | All these factors reduce the response rate , no matter how good the original sample may have been , so that what may have been a reasonable one-in-five sample to begin with ends up as nearer one-in-ten actually obtained , because of losses . |
| 10 | There was a port called Minoa on the south-west coast of Sicily which may have been a Crete-controlled trading station . |
| 11 | One of the features of the years 765–85 may have been a closer involvement on Offa 's part with the kingdom of the East Angles . |
| 12 | It may have been a teetotal , chapel-going household but do n't imagine it was ever narrow-minded or lacked a sense of fun . |
| 13 | This may have been a late flowering of the ‘ badinage ’ that he used to partake in as a Young Conservative with Brixton locals , but so sensitive is Major about his background , that the public is permitted to hear only the Authorised Version . |
| 14 | It is another which may have been a christianised pagan ritual , evolved from dancing round a sacred site or stone on which a church was eventually built . |
| 15 | The third is the possibility , suggested also by Katib Celebi 's account of the office and supported to some degree by several contemporary documents , that there may have been a separate official muftilik of Edirne during the period : unfortunately , so shadowy is the evidence for its existence that as matters now stand it merely adds to the confusion , though could the facts about it be discovered , they might go some way toward resolving some of the problems in this vexed period . |
| 16 | Katib Celebi 's assertion that Abdulkerim was Mufti in Edirne , however , adds yet another unknown to an already difficult set of equations since it suggests the possibility that there may have been a separate official muftilik in Edirne ( and perhaps by extension in Bursa ) concurrently with the Muftilik of Istanbul — this would run contrary to the underlying assumption of the traditional view that the Mufti was the Mufti of the capital , successively Bursa , Edirne and Istanbul some of the holders of which may have become , with the passage of time , confused with the holders of the Muftilik of Istanbul . |
| 17 | AD 10 at this particular place ; it seems to have had a brief existence ; it may have been a Political embarrassment to Cunobelinus at some stage in his early career , or the traders may have just moved elsewhere . |
| 18 | The decision to split the test may have been a political one . |
| 19 | Therefore it was supposed that payments practices , and other institutional arrangements which change only slowly over time , have more influence on the velocity of circulation than any temporary changes in M. Before the First World War there may have been a good deal of truth in this assumption because the financial system was relatively unsophisticated and financial innovation was taking place very slowly by today 's standards . |
| 20 | Although imperfect marketing has been cited by historians as the reason for Victor 's failure , in fact there may have been a simple operational reason . |
| 21 | The result may have been a conflicting programme for pupils . |
| 22 | This may have been a Soviet response to the American nuclear war base facilities under construction at Diego Garcia ( and to a lesser extent to those at the Kagnew Communications Station near Asmara in Ethiopia which had declined in strategic significance and were slowly being wound down ) . |
| 23 | Police believe the weapon may have been a standard cartridge shotgun , specially adapted to fire bullets . |
| 24 | While the United States , by virtue of its major input into Europe after 1941 , may have been a European power , it was not and could not be a European state . |
| 25 | The Pressurized Water Reactor may have been a new type of reactor to Britain , but it was , and has remained , the brand leader in most other nuclear nations . |
| 26 | In the first place , although non-convertible bank notes may have been a new element , many — perhaps most — commercial transactions had long depended on paper bills rather than value-for-weight coin . |
| 27 | On the conscious level , this was almost certainly not so , though deep down there may have been a certain complicity . |
| 28 | It may have been a bogus call … we will just have to wait and see . ’ |
| 29 | Later , in The Sense of Order , my book on decoration , I say somewhere that the shepherd boy who cut a twig from a willow tree and made a little pipe to play a tune on may have been a great genius but we can not tell . |
| 30 | John Donne may have been a great frequenter of plays , but the catalogue of his books he produced in the early seventeenth century reveals no dramatist among the many contemporary English writers he assembled . |