Example sentences of "could not [vb infin] [vb pp] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The 14 respondents ( 46% ) who could not decide included the 10 informants who said they sometimes read SF . |
| 2 | Leith yelled , and as fury which she just could not contain spiralled out of control , her right hand arced through the air , and even as she hit him with all her strength , she was still yelling , ‘ Since it seems to be taking so long to sink in , you can bank on it — whoever pays my mortgage , you 're far , far at the back of the queue ! ’ |
| 3 | The one noise they could not eliminate turned out to be the echo of the Big Bang . |
| 4 | A shadow she could not interpret crossed his face , as he said , ‘ Sometimes people do n't know what they want — until they 've lost it . ’ |
| 5 | The one thought I could not tolerate kept bubbling to the surface : had I really swallowed it ? |
| 6 | I could not feel offended after this , and accepted the wine . |
| 7 | Those who could not escape met their horrific , futile deaths there , ’ they said . |
| 8 | Those who could not escape put in a token appearance , showing themselves before the delegates from their local constituency association and then scuttling off on the first train back to civilization . |
| 9 | He was about to join his companions on the balcony when someone whom he could not see touched his arm and told him he was needed somewhere else . |
| 10 | That could not lie said of ‘ value ’ which was a matter of opinion and not fact . |
| 11 | Disagreements in the church about the point at which one could not compromise left a legacy of schisms in the Nile valley and in North Africa , where the rancour of the Donatist schism persisted until the Muslim invasions swept them away four centuries later . |
| 12 | The associations professed political neutrality and because of this could not become involved directly in local elections ; the Alliance , on the other hand , could — indeed this was the principal rationale for its existence — but even then claimed the same neutrality , helping to cloak manifest sectionalism . |
| 13 | A lamb could not get born . |
| 14 | At the Saulnier farm ( 6 Commando area ) I washed my arm in the cattle trough but could not get rid of the smell . |
| 15 | Then equally big lefts in rounds five and seven could not get rid of a man whose courage failed to make up for obvious shortcomings . |
| 16 | Since we could not get rid of the rule , there was nothing we could do but try to operate it more sensibly . |
| 17 | He could outmanoeuvre them if he wished but he could not get rid of them and he was only groping round in circles about the tree he had made his own . |
| 18 | The argument goes that if we had short-range nuclear weapons at the front , in the event of a rapid advance there would always be the danger that a commander would have no choice but to use those weapons , either because he could not get rid of them back to headquarters , or perhaps to start a nuclear conflagration . |
| 19 | When he came back he had their passports and documents in his hand and it seemed that he could not get rid of them quickly enough . |
| 20 | I would argue though that publication of such material when other writers could not get published is an indication of the bounds of the acceptable in public debate . |
| 21 | Since he could not get married ( marriages were never solemnized during Lent ) Richard decided to delay no longer , Philip having sailed already . |
| 22 | Do the Bank want to go back to a time when a male official could not get married until he was earning £150 per annum and by the time he was earning that sum he was past having an interest in marriage . |
| 23 | Jane could not get worked up about any car . |
| 24 | Other critics who could not get worked up about the play also admired the acting . |
| 25 | But selling more slaves would have done it little good if it could not get paid for them , and in the 1680s the planters owed the company money for two full years supply of slaves . |
| 26 | 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 . |
| 27 | Without this continuing endorsement Gloucester could not have maintained so wide a hegemony . |
| 28 | Without this continuing endorsement Gloucester could not have maintained so wide a hegemony . |
| 29 | 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 . |
| 30 | Artai could not have declared any public intent to marry Jehana , Alexei realised , or it would have been the talk of Kinsai. probably there were rumours — nothing was ever entirely a secret at court — and he glanced again at the women who clustered at the other end of the pool . |