Example sentences of "be [adv] [verb] [prep] it [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The nest was built whilst the truck was in use , so the bird must have been patiently waiting for it to return after each journey so that it could carry on with nest building . |
| 2 | But you 're just waiting for it to happen . ’ |
| 3 | ‘ We 're just waiting for it to rise to the surface are we , Sergeant ? |
| 4 | ‘ Explain yourself ! ’ she 'll say , and I shall be hard put to it to do so . |
| 5 | Again misunderstandings can occur , and the person leading the service and trying to communicate a Christian message may be hard put to it to demonstrate their true meaning . |
| 6 | If the choice facing us were legal , clean , decently performed abortion or none at all , no doubt many of us would be hard put to it to vote for the former ; but in fact the choice is between the legal , clean sort and backstreet self-induced efforts of the Ottey 's Pills variety . |
| 7 | Second , there will be a border area where the two interpretations merge , in the sense that certain particular values for adjective and noun meanings , when joined in an attributive combination , will under either interpretation always correspond to identical external situations ; hence even highly sophisticated investigators might be hard put to it to tell whether a given adjective is simply applicable to X or has as its value having the property of being-related-to-X . |
| 8 | I can assure you that any busybody would be hard put to it to prove maltreatment ! |
| 9 | There is no question , of course , that we make use of relational or " polyadic " predicates of the most diverse types , and that we would be hard put to it to express what we wish to express without them . |
| 10 | ‘ They 'll be hard put to it to think I 'm sleeping with a scruff like that ! ’ |
| 11 | I 'd say you 'd be hard put to it to pay your expensive dues on that flat you live in . ’ |
| 12 | Indeed , a good deal of children 's play , if otherwise defined , could be held to fall into this category ; and occasionally police or social workers are hard put to it to determine where the line should be drawn . |
| 13 | Without tools , when the original Shakers landed , they would have been hard put to it to manage . |
| 14 | Her rent would have certainly been paid in advance and the rent man , whoever he was , would likely be the only one who would come down here , except of course the child 's uncles , and they must have been hard put to it to resort to this hole . |
| 15 | Yet had she been asked what that destination was she would have been hard put to it to answer . |
| 16 | These he carried home , partly because the little room lacked storage space , partly to appease the secretive , magpie instinct which was part of his nature : he loved to keep , hide , obfuscate , cover his tracks ; he had fantasies in the watches of the night of other scholars stealing a march on him and publishing the definitive study of Walter Machin first ( though how that would be possible , in view of his privileged position , he would have been hard put to it to say ) . |
| 17 | And this issue he had been hard put to it to find a couple of intelligent letters for the correspondence page ; sometimes it seemed that every crackbrain in north-east Norfolk read the PANUP newsletter but that no one else did . |
| 18 | The voluntary movement seems determined to retain its traditional role , and the government is apparently relying upon it to do so . |
| 19 | In a world noisy with the organs of mass communication and riddled with propaganda , modern man is hard put to it to preserve his status as an individual . |
| 20 | It soon became evident that the orchestra was fractionally behind on several entries — not enough to unsettle the soloist-aware listener , but after a while I was just waiting for it to happen . |
| 21 | But she had to admit that , realistically , he probably meant that she annoyed him beyond measure and that he was hard put to it to treat her civilly . |
| 22 | The motive power was by hand — there was a crank on either side at the bottom , though Mr. Golding was a powerful man , he was hard put to it to operate the lift on his own and used to puff whilst doing it . |
| 23 | They made a dazzling bouquet , not without charm , but the bunch which was presented each May Day by Mrs Curdle in person to the doctor was of such gargantuan proportions that Mrs Bailey was hard put to it to find a suitable place for it . |
| 24 | ‘ For the first half-dozen years of Scrutiny I had no post and no salary , and was hard put to it to make a living , ’ he once wrote in characteristic vein . |
| 25 | Now he looked up , and Lachlan was hard put to it to meet the bitter glare . |