Example sentences of "[prep] if [pers pn] [vb mod] [vb infin] [vb pp] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Her breakdown can not be better described than in her own words : ‘ She saw , as she thought , devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning waves of fire , as if they would have swallowed her in , sometimes ramping at her , sometimes threatening her … night and day , during the aforesaid time ’ . |
| 2 | Though he noticed there were some who spoke to the superintendent and were completely ignored , while others looked as if they would have preferred to creep past unknown . |
| 3 | ‘ We 've got this Unesco thing coming on — oh , here are the Fairfaxes , ’ he declared , as the door opened to admit a tall middle-aged man and an even taller woman , obviously husband and wife , who had grown to look like each other in a rather unfortunate way , their small heads and long stringy bodies seeming as if they must have combined the worst features of each . |
| 4 | Give us the letter C. ’ Joy Prentice looked as if she would have liked the earth to open under her feet . |
| 5 | Sarah nodded , reluctantly , he felt , as if she would have denied it if she could . |
| 6 | Some of them happened , she said , when ‘ her eyes were ever together-ward as if she would have slept ’ , some she saw ‘ with her ghostly eye ’ ; most of her experiences with the Holy Family she describes just as she does her other , more ordinary experiences . |
| 7 | She spoke as if she should have known about more than the dying town . |
| 8 | She looked as if she could have stepped straight out of an urchin 's game on the street of a Northern Italian village or off the front cover of Vogue . |
| 9 | Allen looked as if he would have liked to have said more , but the presence of Meryl evidently constrained him . |
| 10 | The bastard smiled evilly at me as if he would have loved to have put a noose round my neck and had me swinging on a branch of the overhanging elm tree . |
| 11 | One of the engineers has fallen , and it sounds as if he may have broken his leg . |
| 12 | McKenzie looked as if he might have done enough to retain his crown after coming back from a ninth-round crisis in which he was floored by a two-punch combination to the body . |
| 13 | Father Branche looked puzzled for a moment , as if he might have said something amusing . |
| 14 | Mr Stych stopped in his tracks at the mention of such a sum of money , as Hank had hoped he would , and looked at the boy as if he might have gone dangerously mad . |
| 15 | In his Sunday dress of jeans and a fresh white shirt , he looked as if he 'd get mugged the moment he set foot in a town with more cars than horses . |
| 16 | He felt somehow responsible for the way she was behaving , as if he should have spotted it sooner , caught on sooner . |
| 17 | He 'd had cancer — melanoma , skin cancer — apparently a massive dose of it , and now he looked as if he could have taken on Frank Bruno . |
| 18 | She flushed , almost as if he could have known the part he 'd played in her extraordinarily sensual dreams . |
| 19 | ‘ It looks as if he must have had a run-in with a few trees finding his way home that night . |
| 20 | It looked as if it should have broken , amongst the pebbles in Adam 's bag . |
| 21 | My head rang with that particular vibration of accidental pain , a tintinnabulating effect that always feels as if it should have preceded its cause — by way of a warning . |
| 22 | I feel as if I 'll have done my bit . |
| 23 | Despite the phone ringing insistently in the background , I felt as if I could have sat there for ever . |
| 24 | as if I 'd have let Sam 's hands freeze . |
| 25 | Practising freekicks , with no ball , on no pretext other than looking as if you 'd have done a marvellous job if there had been a ball . |