Example sentences of "a [noun sg] [prep] the first place " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | But good budgeting means having a budget in the first place , having a surplus beyond merest subsistence with which to plan , bulk buy , meet the emergencies which crop up constantly . |
| 2 | Everyone , it seemed , was doing well out of the erosion of the 1878 settlement except the Russians , for whom that settlement had been a defeat in the first place . |
| 3 | Why call a search in the first place ? ’ |
| 4 | Mr. McAllion : The Minister said that there will be only one form of financial assistance per company , in the form of the £48,750 to help people to put together a bid in the first place . |
| 5 | We have simultaneously slipped back into a compromising embrace with the very form of instrumental utilitarianism which got the world into such a mess in the first place : that things are of value because they are of value to us , not because they are of value in themselves . |
| 6 | This was met with a reply of condonation , that 's to say his behaviour in Reno had demonstrated that he had forgiven his wife whatever actions on her part had forced him to seek a divorce in the first place . |
| 7 | It was no longer just a question whether reason and science could tolerate divine intervention in the apparently stable and unalterable laws of the universe ; the new and more insidious question was whether the universe had required a creator in the first place . |
| 8 | If we use up almost all our ration of luck in our theory of how life gets started on a planet in the first place , then we are allowed to postulate very little more luck in subsequent parts of our theory , in , say , the cumulative evolution of brains and intelligence . |
| 9 | Unfortunately , its anorexic attractions are exactly the kind of thing you 'd expect from people who only formed a band in the first place to get off the dole . |
| 10 | If you ca n't tell what is a racist film and what is not , you should n't be in charge of a festival in the first place . |
| 11 | The lesson of all this must be never to lose a ferret in the first place . |
| 12 | I mean , I probably should never be having a nanny in the first Place . |
| 13 | The man had gone to sleep , or at least that was what Mahmoud suspected , and that , to Mahmoud , was an even harder thing to admit than that he had not posted a man in the first place . |
| 14 | The LA has the power to revoke , suspend , curtail or prematurely terminate a licence if the holder has ( a ) broken any conditions attaching to his licence , or ( b ) been convicted of any offences which are of the type relevant to determination of the applicant 's fitness to hold a licence in the first place , or ( c ) been made bankrupt or gone into liquidation . |
| 15 | ‘ How did the mice come to be halfway down a cliff in the first place ? ’ he had asked her . |
| 16 | The habit of proof-reading ( which tends , ironically , to arise from a concern in the first place to spell well ) . |
| 17 | MacArthur is modestly surprised by all the praise and talk of awards that has greeted her recent performances : ‘ These roles have a lot to do with the reason I became an actress in the first place — I still think of my career as being about to begin ! ’ |
| 18 | Whether a requirement to disclose an ensuing report prepared for the defendant would be upheld by the court as a valid condition for granting an examination in the first place is not clear from McGinley v Burke [ 1973 ] 1 WLR 990 . |
| 19 | If the Foreign Office can not agree with MI6 as to who are Britain 's enemies , the effectiveness of MI6 is at risk of being submerged by political expediency , calling into question the whole point of having such an organisation in the first place . |
| 20 | Jespersen ( 1940 : 157 ) sets the problem in more general terms : To is used with an infinitive in the first place where the usual meaning of the preposition is distinctly felt : he went to fetch his hat / he was led ( inclined ) to believe — or is more or less vaguely present : ready to believe/anxious to believe . |