Example sentences of "[vb past] [conj] they could [adv] [verb] " in BNC.
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| 1 | Foreign teachers of English often joked that they could not pass TOEFL , but for the Chinese students it was no laughing matter . |
| 2 | Even after the passing of minimum-wage legislation in 1909 , as many as 42 per cent of the homeworkers in the trades covered by the Acts found that they could not earn the statutory minimum . |
| 3 | Patterson trained her subjects to ask questions when they found that they could not choose between competing referents . |
| 4 | Marathon runners finishing after 2 hours 45 minutes found that they could not get into the stadium after a 26 mile 385 yard slog in 90F temperatures . |
| 5 | Tower Hamlets found that they could not decentralize Social Services , for example , because of the statutory requirement to have a Social Services Committee , but everything else they 've erm within the overall Council policy , which is decided by all the Councillors , they 've decentralized a great deal of the powers down to these local groups of Councillors , and where the Labour control the areas they control these local Councils , and where the Liberal Democrats control them they control them , and I think it 's working very well . |
| 6 | The Poles found that they could not impose any kind of law and order until they knew the exact borders they had been given , and as each day passed they became more and more desperate for a final decision . |
| 7 | The Kaszubes in Danzig and Germany found that they could not export their produce to Poland economically simply because Polish produce was cheaper , and in the Corridor they could not export their produce to Germany effectively because , as far as the Germans were concerned , the Kaszubes were Polish . |
| 8 | He does not seem to have been one universally approved , for a man known as the Acquisitor , and who may have acquired the estates of tax defaulters , probably had enemies , and Dr Keynes has suggested that the retirement from court of the king 's uncle Ordulf and the prominent West Saxon Æthelmær occurred because they could not countenance his growing influence . |
| 9 | Now the three Scottish judges ruled that they could not decide on the matter , a decision , as they must have realized , that was profoundly to affect the trial . |
| 10 | He realised that they could n't put the fire out and that something was going to happen . |
| 11 | Police realised that they could not afford to repeat mistakes made during the Yorkshire Ripper case when they interviewed Peter Sutcliffe a number of times before belatedly arresting him . |
| 12 | It stated the soldier 's undying love for his wife but also made it plain that he realised that they could not live in harmony , so they had better not see each other . |
| 13 | A last-minute hiccup remained ; U Saw and Ba Sein announced that they could not sign , but Aung San brushed this aside : ‘ Let them resign and say they do not agree with the final statement and do not accept any responsibility for it . ’ |
| 14 | According to Töpfer , the Chinese argued that they could not apply Western European safety standards to their nuclear plants . |
| 15 | And doing afterwards I did t er See the war came and they could n't get people . |
| 16 | In August 1989 , at the start of the 1989-90 season , the government introduced an identity-card system for supporters in an attempt to curb violence , but this was abandoned shortly afterwards when fans refused to comply and local authorities declared that they could not enforce it . |
| 17 | I duly notified ‘ the appropriate authorities ’ , and they replied that they could not prevent him from going because he was an English subject . |
| 18 | The union , with the object of getting all mill workers to be members and of increasing wages , approached the mill owners , who replied that they could not raise the wages because of the competition of the crofters who wove imported yarn . |
| 19 | She replied that they could only get an ‘ impression ’ of the girl and there was no use looking farther . |
| 20 | They quickly discovered that they could not agree . |
| 21 | In the event , however , the project occurred in neither of these areas : not in Barnet because the psychogeriatric service was still in the process of development ; nor in Southwark because , although there was an enormous amount of goodwill and enthusiasm for the project , the social services unions ( particularly the joint Home Helps Shop Stewards Committee ) decided that they could not endorse cooperation with the project , the main reason being that they felt — mistakenly in our view — that a project which employed its own carers might be a threat to the employment of local authority home helps , and that ‘ to endorse such a service is not helping the elderly in the long term , it is only carrying out this Government 's stratagem in closing Homes and hospitals ’ . |
| 22 | I recall the gist of it implied that they could n't sit there sunbathing too long if they wanted to get through all seven tops . |
| 23 | Well , he found them the best ski runs in the Cairngorms when they started and they could n't afford to give him anything very spectacular , so he said , ‘ Can I have the ski shop and the bobble hat concession ? ’ |
| 24 | Their low productivity , high levels of ( now-withdrawn ) state subsidy and overmanning meant that they could not compete with agricultural products from West Germany and other EC countries . |
| 25 | That meant that they could not stand the Central Office youths involved in the nuts and bolts of the campaign . |
| 26 | They had invested millions of dollars and lives in this war , and this meant that they could not extract themselves easily . |
| 27 | When Mr John Guy , an orthopaedic surgeon at the Worcester Royal Infirmary , wrote to people on his waiting list to say that health authority cuts meant that they could not have their hip replacement operations , a patient passed a copy of his letter to Nicholas Ridley . |
| 28 | This prohibition on other forms of lending meant that they could not issue cheque guarantee cards because they would then be obliged to honour cheques of depositors who overdrew their accounts thereby , in effect , giving them an overdraft . |
| 29 | The main Maronite Christian militia , the Lebanese Forces ( LF ) , contended that they could not disarm while armed Palestinian units remained in southern Lebanon . |
| 30 | They did not give their reasons , but Fr Morrow said that they had told him they had carefully studied the Law Lords ' decision to allow feeding tubes to be removed from Mr Bland and felt that they could not serve the summons . |