Example sentences of "not [noun sg] but a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Yet the Japanese term normally used for the transfer , ishin , is more correctly translated as ‘ renovation , — a term which implies not retrospection but a sense of renewal and looking forward . |
| 2 | He is admiring of the soldiers ' courage but not persuaded by their beliefs : training people to sacrifice themselves produces not altruism but a fascinated following of others to death not so much to help but merely to follow ( p. 88 ) . |
| 3 | Then it is not scepticism but a withdrawal from reality . |
| 4 | That was not indexation but a recognition of the fact that , if an exemption is to be made , it should be at a sensible and workable level . |
| 5 | The tensions of Sard Harker lead ultimately to the uniting of lover and beloved rather than to tragedy ; the prevailing note is not foreboding but a painful and frustrating postponement , again by the hazards of an overland journey . |
| 6 | The canvas of my tent ( to be exact , not canvas but a green plastic material ) is flapping in the breeze which comes over the plains and stirs the dry leaves where they lie on the bottom of the dry river . |
| 7 | The colouring in the peacock 's tail feathers is not pigment but a reflecting material that changes colour as the light strikes it . |
| 8 | In the second half of 1848 the Prussian ambassador was reporting to Berlin that St Petersburg 's main concerns were not revolution but a cholera epidemic , the expectation of a poor harvest and a shortage of cash . |
| 9 | He ordered the taverner to bring two blackjacks of brimming ale and , since it was Friday , not meat but a dish of lampreys and fresh white bread for himself and Sir John . |
| 10 | A new emotion of tingling heat and cold intermingled , and this sensation is not despair but an austere joy . |
| 11 | It is obvious the way the railway should move forward not privatization but a reversal of the underfunding and a move to a total commitment of higher financial support . |
| 12 | The implications were that I had no physical characteristics of my own , but that in the same way as I ‘ had ’ my father 's nose , or my grandmother 's eyes , I somehow inhabited a body which was not mine but a replica of my mother 's , and over which , therefore , I had no control . |
| 13 | All there is in this thunder is not relief but a revival of ‘ aethereal rumours ’ which ‘ only at nightfall … / Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus . ’ |
| 14 | Their secretion seems to be not food but a volatile potion that has a dramatic impact upon the ants ' behaviour . |
| 15 | At this level science is not science but a series of best guesses . |
| 16 | Subconsciously he must have been expecting something like this : his first reaction was not surprise but an intensification of the dull misery which had enveloped him for the last 24 hours . |
| 17 | Another skitter of light behind his eye broke the hold of sensation , and he was once again entire — his prick its modest length — and she not darkness but a body through which waves of iridescence seemed to pass . |
| 18 | Oakeshott recognizes a morality inherent in the rule of law and suggests that to deliberate the jus of lex involves not deduction but a particular kind of moral consideration ; that the prescriptions of law ‘ should not conflict with a prevailing educated moral sensibility ’ of a people . |