Example sentences of "could have [vb pp] [adv] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Beethoven , among others , could not comprehend how Mozart could have stooped so low as to set to music such an apparently frivolous text , dealing with the fickleness of women ; and the prudish moral climate of the later 19th century made sure that Così was conveniently ignored as a little aberration . |
| 2 | He did n't know ‘ what statement Mr. Gibbon had made to the other gentlemen or what reasoning they could have employed so as to sign a paper declaring the fact of urinous vomiting to be utterly impossible — here I must be at issue with them believing as I do … from my little physiological knowledge , that vomiting of urine for 26 weeks is by no means impossible … ’ . |
| 3 | They could have applied up to five years . |
| 4 | The slanderous epitaph Burns wrote for John Brown of Mauchline could have applied equally as well to the poet himself : |
| 5 | So the chalk could have absorbed up the grease . |
| 6 | He could have kicked around forever in the States , and if he had never come here he might have never gotten anywhere . |
| 7 | A COMPUTER blip could have messed up the statements of millions of credit card customers , it was revealed last night . |
| 8 | I could have messed about to get the price under 20m to make them legit. teans but I could n't be arsed ! |
| 9 | I wish I could give these women their time again , to take them to the hills and show them what they could have shared with their selfish husbands , show them how a ridge-walk compares to a coffee morning in a draughty church hall , and how they could have become more in tune with their spirit and feelings up here than stuck down there watching television soap operas . |
| 10 | Therefore , if the origin of the phenomenon is as recent as the late eighteenth century , it is difficult to explain how it could have become so geographically widespread in so short a time : it was already highly salient and overtly stigmatized by the latter half of the nineteenth century ( for some citations see Phillipps , 1984 , 136–9 ) . |
| 11 | I do n't think that was true then , though it could have become so as Saddam Hussein faced continued sanctions . |
| 12 | Some could have increased overtime working , but for those using continuous or semi-continuous production processes this was technically difficult , and for those employing mainly women infeasible . |
| 13 | Pity you were n't here , I could have rushed up a ticket or two and you could have explained the finer nuances . |
| 14 | ‘ You knew , or could have guessed how I felt about my stepmother . |
| 15 | So no-one could have guessed really what was on underneath here . |
| 16 | After studying large numbers of systems of kinship terms and placing them in an evolutionary sequence , partly in terms of their characteristics , partly in terms of the technological level reached by the societies from which they originated , Morgan felt confident that he had discovered a governing tendency in the history of human marriage : as social evolution progressed , the number of legitimate sexual partners a man or a woman could have diminished progressively , finally producing monogamy — the permanent union of one man and one woman . |
| 17 | I could however moan on about the likelihood of anyone ever wanting to listen to this collection straight through at one sitting , or that Miss Battle could have done rather more in the way of characterising each aria ( and her diction is also hardly crystal clear ) . |
| 18 | Blake tried to persuade him that there was little he could have done anyway , but the time traveller would not agree . |
| 19 | Actions like this only lead to bad feeling , especially when there are a number of established classics like Showtime , Urgent Action and The Ripper that he could have done instead . |
| 20 | Although , in manners bound , he held and played with her hand for the rest of the drive home , he felt that he could have done instead with a nice talk about hunting . |
| 21 | By using a tool the ant is able to transport ten times as much food per trip as it could have done otherwise . |
| 22 | As this self is debated and discussed , the individualist sometimes seems to be demanding that a ceteris paribus clause should be included in all explanations of social phenomena — a murmured oath of loyalty to the freedom of the will along the lines of ‘ … and the individuals involved could have done otherwise ’ . |
| 23 | It seems doubtful that they could have done otherwise . |
| 24 | I 'm not changing my tune , Councillor Wyle knows that in the past I have actually offered to go with them when they 've made erm , visits to the minister , and when he said , we we we tried , but we never got anywhere , and on various issues I 've said , well perhaps if we got us an all party delegation , at least we could have done no worse . |
| 25 | Maybe it 's the best thing she could have done then , get a job ? |
| 26 | No one who did not dearly love Dickens could have done all this . |
| 27 | Thus a man who could have done all sorts of good things is rendered useless ; and the same sort of outcome could follow in a case involving not one but two men , or a hundred or more , or even a whole branch of a family ( progenies ) or at the same time a whole province — if you 're not very careful ! " ( c. 31 ) |
| 28 | Probably I could have done quite a bit better if I 'd been forced to work , because if I 'm not , I 'm not so bothered to do the work . |
| 29 | Cutting that over the numbers had me down and stopped well before the first intersection , a distance of around 400 metres , and I could have done much better if I 'd heaved on the brakes , which are single Goodyear discs with excellent stopping power . |
| 30 | they mentioned he had an excellent game — and from the goals showed the scot goalkeeper could have done much better on two of the italian goals … specially the first one — a flat shot from far out and at an angle too . |