Example sentences of "could have [vb pp] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | If only she could have waved a magic wand to turn the fat girl into a raving beauty . |
| 2 | I thought Sooty could have waved his wand and made that appear too , but where would he stand while he was doing it ? |
| 3 | She understood why Johnny had felt saddened when he had learned of their passing , and she smiled briefly as she recalled that she had never found the courage to tell him of the passing of that Empire , too — fearing that such knowledge could have precipitated an apoplectic fit ! |
| 4 | They could have filled the cellars of Masham with McEwans 80/ and Youngers No. 3 from Edinburgh or with the new Theakstons-on-Tyne which the locals declare is a far inferior brew . |
| 5 | — that British Aerospace has just won for 20 RJ70s that is especially designed for the United States market and fills a niche that no one else could have filled ? |
| 6 | The halls were much smaller than the rock star could have filled and concert hall operators became suspicious . |
| 7 | You could have filled it in . |
| 8 | That trip must have revived Nicolae 's memories of his time in Stalin 's Moscow , but the frenzied adulation of Mao surpassed anything that Ceauşescu could have witnessed in the Soviet Union . |
| 9 | Counsel for the appellants had attacked this finding because the patient had been an outpatient at a different hospital in the past and a practitioner there could have fulfilled this function ; and he submitted that in any case it was a duty of the hospital managers to find out if it was practicable to obtain the recommendation of a practitioner who had previous acquaintance with the patient : he relied on the form of the question ‘ explain why you could not get a recommendation from a medical practitioner who did know the patient ’ on the hospital admission application form . |
| 10 | Some moment when she , as a child , was on the verge of doing something wrong , and he could have fulfilled a father 's role and made her do it . |
| 11 | 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 . |
| 12 | Party candidates privately admit that regular meetings could have jeopardised Labour 's chances . |
| 13 | Neither do I believe that a painter could have painted it — had he seen what I saw . |
| 14 | Ilya Ehrenburg knew Modi better than most ; he said , ‘ Of course he could have painted portraits that might have pleased the critics and buyers … |
| 15 | Communism had been his religion , the romantic , revolutionary communism of 1917 and Petrograd and the streets full of soldiers and sailors and workers and red flags and armoured cars that looked as if they were made of galvanised steel buckets , and the cruiser Aurora out on the river with its searchlight blazing — now there was a fairground panel he could have painted if only he could have got away with it — but it was n't the same any more . |
| 16 | There is no precipice except in the painting ( though no doubt Junge could have painted the downward view if asked ) and Deborah Kerr has to act shock/horror , which she is perfectly capable of doing , and does splendidly . |
| 17 | He could have dived for pearls and she could have painted . |
| 18 | We could have poured it down the sink . |
| 19 | Tim Congdon , chief economist at Gerrard and National , a discount house , believes that by the end of the century that 5% gap could have trebled . |
| 20 | Alternatively the committee could have served as a scapegoat if Pomgol activities had failed completely . |
| 21 | The butcher — a distinguished-looking man who could have served as a model for Mr Micawber and had , also , his turn of phrase . |
| 22 | It was always but a matter of illustration , and any branch of production could have served that purpose equally well … |
| 23 | I have cited the work of Olson , Hildyard and Greenfield as representative of the ‘ strong ’ version of the ‘ autonomous , model , although other writers could have served the purpose equally well so my criticisms are not intended as specific to them . |
| 24 | In the apparent absence of identifiable buildings , market-places can only be inferred from the presence of large open areas near the centres of towns , which could have served for periodic markets and fairs . |
| 25 | 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 … ’ . |
| 26 | If anything could have frightened us away from the proposition it would have been the failure of the Leader of the Opposition to advance a sensible argument on anything at all . |
| 27 | If a meeting with that strange character was important , the usurper could have summoned Dunbar to himself , not had to ride eighty miles to see him . |
| 28 | that they could have summoned help or anything else . |
| 29 | Conscious of his literary failings he often pointed out that he wished some ‘ literary residents , who by their good taste and frequent travel ’ could have undertaken the task . |
| 30 | Without it , I doubt if he could have undertaken such work is he did . |