Example sentences of "not [adv] much [verb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | With boys in unskilled employment , the intention was not so much to impart skills , ‘ as to retain [ them ] at an impressionable age and to mould and discipline their character ’ , and in such cases specialization or technical training would be out of place . |
| 2 | The primary function of the teacher is not so much to impart information as to help the student to assimilate the course of reading and lesson notes and to stimulate the questioning attitude of mind by every means at his/her disposal . |
| 3 | Adding to the ‘ are they or are n't they ’ downsizing dispute , Hewlett-Packard Co 's UK marketing manager , Nick Earle , claims users are not so much ditching their mainframes wholesale as running core applications on mainframes and installing others on mid-range systems . |
| 4 | The results are sought not so much to enrich the domain of research with fundamentally new findings as to demonstrate the validity of some new form of automatic processing . |
| 5 | These papers were not so much creating a new market as servicing an established public interest . |
| 6 | We 're not so much looking to Wembley . |
| 7 | Blown-up extracts from contemporary Paris newspapers , on panels larger than the works of art on display , suggest that the district 's sudden fame was not so much to do with art or philosophy , but the novel phenomenon of la jeunesse . |
| 8 | But perhaps this not so much to do with ‘ stars ’ as the fact that related people often share the same preferences when planning their families . |
| 9 | They suggest that in many circumstances , and particularly more recently , the central problems facing management are not so much to do with control over labour but are much more to do with such matters as obtaining orders for products , getting the design right , innovating , and handling their relations with the capital market . |
| 10 | Most recent models of 6mm collet routers now produce around twice the power of this model ; this is not so much to speed the work , but more to improve the quality and variety of profiles made by cutters . |
| 11 | If the weather was fine Maud liked to walk in Hyde Park , not so much to see as to be seen , her small hand slotted lightly into he bend of his arm . |
| 12 | My ghetto-blasterette , loaded with Chuck Berry , is constantly by my side today ( apologies to the neighbours ) , not so much to lift my spirits , as to keep me awake . |
| 13 | In order not to seem too dictatorial , and perhaps to conform with some grass-roots grocer-Tory image , ministers have sometimes spoken as if their aim was not so much to take powers to themselves ( and thus away from Local Authorities ) as to give powers to parents . |
| 14 | Their role is not so much to perform on their own as to lead and embellish the chants . |
| 15 | In the 1840s the aim would have been not so much to save the debtor 's soul as to save his creditors the expense and boredom of having to sue him . |
| 16 | She seemed to be asking not so much to save herself as because of some instinct for the men 's friendship . |
| 17 | But if we listen to them carefully , it is evident that they parade their doubts not so much to resolve them as to evoke public sympathy and to gain that sense of identity which comes from subconsciously defining themselves by their problems . |
| 18 | In suggesting that the idea of higher education is hinged on self-criticism , I am not so much developing a personal concept of higher education , therefore , as drawing to the surface our common ( though largely hidden ) understanding of higher education . |
| 19 | In her case , perhaps , it was not so much leaving a group that hurt as leaving a stage . |
| 20 | ‘ What you are saying is that I am not so much searching for Harry , rather , Harry is winding me in , like a fish on a line — ’ |
| 21 | In dividing behaviour into inherited and learned , he was not so much trying to explain how behaviour develops as how it comes to be adapted . |
| 22 | I like the Katherine Mansfield type of short story , which has marvellous mood , but where not so much happens . |
| 23 | She would have known , as Diana discovered too late , that Camilla 's famous vetting of Charles 's girlfriends was not so much to assess their potential as a royal bride but to see how much of a threat they posed to her friendship with Prince Charles . |
| 24 | Peter hesitated in the hall , not so much to eavesdrop as to prepare himself for a noiseless ascent of the stairs . |
| 25 | Meanwhile Jackson himself , a gangly six foot four , with a hairline not so much receding as speeding flat out towards his neck , was easily slotted in with the other unlikely pop stars , taking their surly revenge on the conventional way of doing things . |
| 26 | To them , the danger is not so much receding as increasing : but that is because their definition of what constitutes danger is very different from ours . |
| 27 | It 's not so much to ask , is it ? |
| 28 | Yes , the copying music , what I 'm asking for is not so much copying there , ag it 's it 's the old friend transposition , well it 's partly copying , but it 's mainly transposition of erm horn , trumpet and clarinet parts |
| 29 | In legal matters there is usually a certain room for difference of opinion , and even though there be positive authority against your view , the examiner is anxious not so much to test the details of your knowledge as to assess your ability to argue in a lawyer-like way . |
| 30 | It was , in the first place , a world not so much consisting of factories , employers and proletarians as one transformed by the enormous progress of its industrial sector . |