Example sentences of "[conj] could " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Theirs was the charm of not being bourgeois , and the foreigners among them could be , or could come across as , princes , pretenders to a throne , descendants of a khan . |
| 2 | It was , or could be called , an impurity . |
| 3 | Whereas similar provisions in other countries were mainly designed to provide facilities which could or could not be used , the Irish ones were to be compulsory and there was to be no choice of doctor . |
| 4 | Not so much the compromises , the deceits , the hypocrisies affecting his work , his women , his children , even his friends , but the sense of despair and failure hovering over him , as though he was trapped and did n't know how it had happened or what he should or could do . |
| 5 | Or could it be that , by the merest possible chance , Steffi is in fact … |
| 6 | This could be on a regular basis , for example once a week , or could be available in an emergency . |
| 7 | Excusably perhaps , neither Edmund Wilson nor any one else could understand , or could credit , the scale on which Pound was working : 120 cantos , and by the time Pound died in 1972 , the poem had fallen only just short of that . |
| 8 | Of the other 13 POWs , six were given nothing , five either died at that time or could not be traced , and two refused to submit to means testing . |
| 9 | ‘ Or could they be , in any way , related ? ’ |
| 10 | President Christos Sartzetakis asked Mr Grivas to form a government after the main political parties would or could not do so . |
| 11 | ‘ Or could they be , in any way , related ? ’ |
| 12 | Then , by an extraordinary fortune , the three Cambridge chairs of divinity which were or could be in his field of study fell vacant within three years . |
| 13 | By 1982 we had swept up all but a handful of awkward items whose inhabitants , for varying reasons , did n't want to be or could n't be ‘ nationalised ’ — which was very untidy and inconvenient of them . |
| 14 | They took from it what they felt they could handle — or wanted to handle , or could put to some use — and rejected the rest . |
| 15 | Friendship networks so old and intimate that the differences and difficulties could collapse into wild mirth at any instant , or could flare into fights which , however vicious at the time , would not actually change anything nor prevent her and all her friends coming together again soon after , at identical but different pine kitchen tables , scattered in a loose lop-sided circle around central London . |
| 16 | There is therefore very much in Engels 's discussion of existing political organization which is still acceptable ; however , recent anthropological work makes it clear that if something like the notion of the gentile constitution is to be retained , the concept would have to be broadened to include a much greater variety of such systems than was , or could have been , envisaged by the founders of Marxism . |
| 17 | For all Wexford knew or could remember there might have been a bank robbery in that city at that time . |
| 18 | The figures could have been used to cover a fraud operation or could have have been the result of no-one ever checking the facts . |
| 19 | Consider , he says , that when we speak of the existence of a sensible thing we mean that we are perceiving it by various of our senses , or could perceive it were we suitably placed . |
| 20 | Or could dying only be brave if you were shot at ? |
| 21 | So she grinned vaguely in a way that could have meant yes or could have meant no . |
| 22 | He would not tell me , or could not explain . |
| 23 | ‘ Could Beatrice perhaps be getting a bit old in herself , ’ I had suggested , ‘ or could it perhaps be something to do with the accident she had as a child ? ’ |
| 24 | Perhaps she had suffered a small fit after all , or could it have been a touch of fever ? |
| 25 | Or could the shape have been re-arranged by the fierce wind ? |
| 26 | Do you , for instance , want a disco because it will bring a welcome break to an otherwise ( necessarily ) heavy and demanding programme , or could it prove too sharp a contrast and interrupt the concentration you 're trying to establish ? |
| 27 | Could Ireland only be prevented from copying England by English rule , or could she somehow rediscover her pride , her lost Sovereignty ? |
| 28 | And perhaps , occasionally , he was frustrated by what he could or could not achieve . |
| 29 | Occasionally , Mr Landor would accuse her of stealing from him when he had mislaid a silver spoon or could not find a precious paperknife , but she had always treated these accusations with the contempt they deserved . |
| 30 | What struck me , however , was how distant the preoccupations of the audience were from those which could capture a majority in modern Britain , or could govern it successfully if that majority were ever won . |