Example sentences of "not [be] [that] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Half those questioned had not heard of SERPS — which might not have been surprising had it not been that most were members of it . |
| 2 | If anything , by the end of the nineteenth century it was the expanding Polish population of the partition areas that needed living space , and the German Ostflucht might well have given it to them had it not been that Germany desperately needed to maintain the spluttering fiction of the drive to the east to divert and subvert internal political pressures . |
| 3 | It becomes an argument about propriety : Smith says ‘ May it not be that in woman the physical pain neutralizes the sexual emotions which would otherwise … tend very much to alter our estimation of the modesty and retiredness proper to the sex , and which are never more prominent or more admirable than on these occasions ? ’ |
| 4 | Could it not be that during cleavage , when the egg divides up , each cell acquires special determinants , either cytoplasmic or nuclear , which would control the cell 's future development ? |
| 5 | It may not be that we have become too sophisticated but that we are so confused we seek salvation even from out there . |
| 6 | It was not unlike the feeling she experienced when men looked at her and wanted her though she knew it could not be that for there was nothing sexual between her and Gary and never would be . |
| 7 | Warlow and his supporters point to the fact that certain quasars ( highly energetic galaxies ) have jets of material emerging from their cores : could it not be that stars and big gassy planets can behave analogously ? |
| 8 | Might it not be that the glowing auras are in fact photographs of the soul ? |
| 9 | But the ground of the complaint would not be that the giraffe 's right to self determination was being thwarted , as we would say of a human being in a cage , but the general distaste at the conviction that the animal must be suffering severe discomfort . |
| 10 | Could it not be that today 's mania for ‘ disseminating ’ and ‘ promoting ’ culture expressions which should be banned has actually caused the prevailing sterility ? |
| 11 | It may or may not be that he would have thought it necessary for there to be a ‘ natural resemblance ’ ( such as the Vatican Declaration believes to be necessary ) between the male Christ and the male priest . |
| 12 | It surely could not be that McNab was confounded , utterly at a loss , for surely almost anyone could string a few medical terms together ( enough to convince the survivors of Krishnapur if not the Royal College of Physicians ) and save face . |
| 13 | It may or may not be that decisions and the like are in fact standard effects . |
| 14 | In a third part , the objection must be that with respect to confirmed hypotheses as to condition-sets , it can not be that those condition-sets are causal circumstances as conceived . |
| 15 | Could it not be that the same was true in quantum theory ? |
| 16 | Though intimidation was not discussed in the case it can not be that B could have avoided the binding nature of the contract by the simple device of counterclaiming for damages for intimidation and it seems therefore that for the purposes of intimidation the plaintiff should be required to show unlawful coercion at least of such a degree as would enable him to avoid a contract . |
| 17 | It might be that the subject noun and verb phrase go together to form a constituent , so you have Florence teased Dougal or the structure might not be that it might just be three separate constituents with no firm structure forming a further constituent , so why that structure ? |
| 18 | May it not be that the outcome reflects the real motive — the wish to procure an external realization of a regressive , inner phantasy , that of the supreme parent of earliest childhood ? |
| 19 | In such cases the code used in the quotation need not be that used by the original speaker : its force derives from the fact that it is different from the code of the part of the turn in which it is embedded . |
| 20 | It is , of course , quite obvious once we stop to think about it that the important difference between those that produced the cold and those that did not is that one group was susceptible to it whilst the other one was not . |
| 21 | Perhaps the reason why more do not is that most people are protected by their lifestyles from the uncomfortable logic of the deficiency in their faith . |
| 22 | Clara had actually heard one constant church attender , caught out donating a small charitable sum to the Vicar , defend herself to Mrs Maugham by saying that she had n't really meant to give it , and that she never would have given it if it had n't been that her little boy had just given up Sunday school . |
| 23 | He would n't have minded the meanness of only allowing one glass each , if it had n't been that the reception was so timed as to prevent that vital half-hour in the pub before closing time , which was so much a part of the necessary wind-down from giving of himself in performance . |
| 24 | It would of just , it would have been , if he had n't been that he , you know that he had to go to a school in Northumberland , he was just as near |
| 25 | Oh no I have n't been that that bad but I reckon I 've |
| 26 | ‘ I ca n't be that until their bodies are found . |
| 27 | She said , between sobs that seemed to tear her chest open , something that sounded like , ‘ All my fault He knew it could n't be that because it did n't make sense but there was no point in asking her what she had said because she was crying too hard She cried and cried and Nick sat and watched . |
| 28 | It ca n't be that you have no principles . |
| 29 | Of course it could n't be that Nick had been relieved . |
| 30 | It could n't be that I was right , and while I yearned to return to a certainty I already knew , I heard only my mother 's voice , insisting , on one dead note , that she knew of what life should consist . |