Example sentences of "too [adj] to be [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | You are too callow to be aware of this but the term ‘ boxer shorts ’ is merely a marketing neologism , coined in order to revamp a demand for what in England was perceived as an outmoded type of underwear . |
| 2 | It would , for example , be no defence for the seller to say that his farm fertiliser was perfectly safe and effective when applied in the right concentration ( at the right time of the year ) if the instructions supplied with the fertiliser stated in error the wrong concentration , whether too weak to be effective or so strong as to kill the crops . |
| 3 | They are too weak to be pushy . |
| 4 | This is the way life is for thousands of working women living with elderly relatives , running a home that the parent is no longer able to manage , as well as giving her care and emotional support , and often feeling too exhausted to be able to organise any reasonable social lives for themselves . |
| 5 | Henry stands in the corner , too expectant to be rude . |
| 6 | Please contact ( retiring only because Alex is getting too mobile to be safe for the new babies ) on for further details . |
| 7 | The students from that time remembered a man with a sharp sense of the ridiculous ; who ragged them but was too shy to be intimate with them though they liked him much for his friendliness and his humour ; who was famous for long , sudden , and embarrassing silences ; who was so eccentric that none of them believed that he could later be a man of distinction in England or his Church ; a man who loved theology — they never met anywhere else a man who so loved theology , and who regarded theology as the highest intellectual activity for humanity ; a fierce defender of liberty of opinion , for Marxists as for anyone else ; whose principal theme was the glory of God , and who was evidently touched by his ideas of Plato ; who did not give the impression of a mind of exceptional ability — there was not enough knife in the mind — but who gave the impression of being an exceptional person ; who disturbed other people 's prayers in chapel with convulsive fidgets and sudden face-rubbings — they regarded him as tense in his devotions and were afraid of a nervous breakdown ; who had a manifest and rare mystical sense of the immediate presence of God , a presence so brilliant that it could almost overpower . |
| 8 | While these descriptions of the semantic value of to + infinitive are too specific to be adequate characterizations of the potential meanings involved here ( in fact they correspond to actual meanings of the construction in particular contexts ) , they are nevertheless faithful reflections of the potential meaning of to and of the fact that the latter always evokes the bare infinitive 's event as an after-position with respect to some position before its realization . |
| 9 | But we were all too polite to be honest . |
| 10 | Under the glare of the fluorescent light the whole bizarre scene , Berowne 's sprawled body and severed throat , the clotted blood , the tramp propped like a stringless marionette against the wall , looking for a moment unreal , a Grand Guignol tableau too overdone and too contrived to be convincing . |
| 11 | They are ingenious but too contrived to be convincing . |
| 12 | His approach is a clear indication that the apparent rigours of Faccenda are now being mitigated by judges because the definition of trade secrets given in that case has been found to be too narrow to be workable . |
| 13 | This time , his look of puzzlement was far too exaggerated to be genuine , but she kept her voice even as she said , ‘ What … did … you … mean ? ’ |
| 14 | It was much too obsessive to be erotic . |
| 15 | On the one hand , it is argued that labour costs in advanced countries have become too high to be competitive for many industrial tasks . |
| 16 | If it becomes obvious during the base leg or final turn that you are far too high to be able to get down in the chosen field , it is often possible to make an S-turn to use up some of the height . |
| 17 | Too old to be involved in this escalating round of violence . |
| 18 | ‘ Too old to be young , too young to be old ’ , they are in a kind of limbo . |
| 19 | ‘ I 'm too old to be upset . ’ |
| 20 | that would upset me mum and dad , I do n't want , they 're too old to be upset |
| 21 | Too old to be safe ? |
| 22 | They are too old to be worried about the physical changes that have taken place in them , but I also see that they share a certain self-regard , a comfort which — I hazard a speculation — is robbed from old people in our cities . |
| 23 | The main point to realise is that if you can not feel a positive lock , you are either not pushing hard enough or the lock is completely out of adjustment and too light to be effective . |
| 24 | But it feels strange : when you look at it in the bowl , it looks too runny to be fun , but when you touch it , it 's the squelchiest , stickiest sensation ; it turns to spaghetti when you let it drip through your fingers and it 's stodgy enough to make into patterns , swirling in different colours and practising making faces , people , letters and numbers . |
| 25 | The pyocyanases and the penicillia did not appear to harm patients , but they were too difficult to extract and too unstable to be useful . |
| 26 | At Oxford I discovered that most people were only too willing to be friendly if I gave them a chance . |
| 27 | Today , with such a vast number of creators , even the definition of artist is often too generalised to be helpful , as it embraces commercial and non-commercial practitioners of fine art , graphics and so on alike . |
| 28 | This is too tremendous to be true , ’ breathed Captain Pugwash . |
| 29 | But it is still too early to be certain , and the jury must remain out until there is sufficient evidence of a true change of heart to distinguish it from the earnest gestures of political expediency . |
| 30 | With Nigeria , after only just over two years of the new system , it is still too early to be sure , but in general governments at federal and state level appear to be respecting the guarantees of freedom of expression . |