Example sentences of "[modal v] [vb infin] [verb] as a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | It should have come as a complete surprise , but the man swayed , taking Ross 's fist on his shoulder . |
| 2 | One must have served as a recumbent tombstone , since it has a slot at one end to hold a vertical cross . |
| 3 | Martin Browne himself believed that Eliot was too ready to rely upon outworn social and theatrical conventions , but suggested that they " reflect an unconscious reversion to the drama that Eliot must have seen as a young theatregoer before 1914 " . |
| 4 | Whatever it is about the cuckoo 's gape that acts like a drug on the host 's nervous system , it must have originated as a genetic mutation . |
| 5 | ‘ When you got the solicitor 's letter saying you 'd inherited the place it must have come as a terrific shock . |
| 6 | He had picked up the pieces after the war and it must have come as a total shock to someone with his background to find players in his side who rocked the boat . |
| 7 | Being so far advanced in this objective , even before the evening started , it must have come as a great surprise when the meeting was jolted into controversy by an unexpected suggestion from Councillor B. Watts . |
| 8 | All the rulings have been accepted by the companies concerned , not always without some hard pounding en route , and the adverse publicity arising must have acted as a powerful deterrent to other companies contemplating the use of accounting treatments on a basis of doubtful motivation and justification . |
| 9 | In a workshop session which the BA might consider restaging as a full day seminar , Peter Mouncey of the AA , Leslie Henry of Book Marketing Ltd and Sue Morris of W H Smith tackled ‘ Targeting the book market — the role of research ’ from three different though complementary angles . |
| 10 | Although Toryism might have survived as a distinctive ideology , and although a Tory party with its own organisation might have continued to exist , the fact of the matter is that single-party government was established under George I and George II , and there was no swinging back and forth between Tory- and Whig-dominated administrations such as had happened under William and Anne . |
| 11 | Theatre , in past centuries , might have counted as a mass medium : it was an effective way of spreading ideas , and so it suffered official censorship ( not abolished until the 1960s ) . |
| 12 | She made between 70 and 90 blouses a week which , despite the low rate of pay , compares well with what she might have got as a part-time worker in a sweat shop , the most likely alternative . |
| 13 | The problems associated with the common contraceptive pill , brought to light decades after its introduction , might seem to serve as an ominous precedent . |
| 14 | With renewed talk of winding down both military alliances some ministers believe Nato must avoid stating the obvious : that the Warsaw Pact could cease to exist as a viable alliance . |
| 15 | It may have begun as a seasonal steading , only later being permanently occupied . |
| 16 | In general we are our own worst enemies when it comes to enlarging and reinforcing our fears , so that what may have begun as a minor apprehension can escalate into a problem of mammoth proportions . |
| 17 | The consequence of what Nicholls may have intended as a politic and eirenical statement was suspension , degradation , and imprisonment . |
| 18 | There was a small top storey , a room on the flat roof which may have functioned as a sleeping place on hot summer nights : there were similar roof chambers on Egyptian houses too . |
| 19 | Whilst the provisions of the agreement should when drafted accurately reflect what the partners desire to happen in certain specified events or , at any rate , what the partners may have agreed as a satisfactory basis for subsequent negotiation or a sufficient fall-back position if those negotiations should break down , they should be kept under regular review . |
| 20 | Even if they were not consciously doing so , feelings of risk may have acted as an important retrieval cue in the context . |
| 21 | NEIL Kinnock 's slightly manic conducting of Men of Harlech at Egglescliffe School on Friday may have come as a mild surprise to the attendant gentlemen of the Press . |
| 22 | For secondary school teachers of mathematics who have been eager to respond to the call for investigative work , the introduction of GCSE coursework assessment may have come as a rational consequence of what they see as timely changes in the curriculum . |
| 23 | For the five-part piece that follows , for which the livret suggests that both strings and winds played , the score does not reveal whether the oboe band would have played as a four-part ensemble or have expanded to five parts in order to double all the strings . |
| 24 | Mary had once mentioned Tom to her but his marriage to Alice would , she knew , be of no significance in the intensely inward life of the old woman whom unsympathetic observers would have categorised as a mad old crone . |
| 25 | Tawney 's argument placed ‘ the world of Labour ’ explicitly before his audience , at a time when he and they were concerned about the WEA 's drift towards the middle class — a drift that any radical , like Tawney , would have regarded as an unqualified loss , an opting for the ‘ line of least resistance ’ . |
| 26 | On being introduced he made an effort not to avert his eyes , as one felt he would have done as a young man . |
| 27 | But if they were taut , they would have acted as a small trampoline , bouncing the hammer up towards the string again . |
| 28 | He was what her mother would have described as a good man . |
| 29 | For instance , we can easily miss the point made by our Lord when he set a child in the midst of the crowd and declared to the surrounding throng that if they wished to enter the Kingdom of Heaven they would have to become as a little child ( Matt. |
| 30 | It is a term which Carver would have used as a young man to dissociate himself and his peers from others , and its use here encourages the reader to share Carver 's memories of his own surprise and , perhaps , disappointment at Gardner 's appearance . |