Example sentences of "a [noun sg] [prep] the first place " in BNC.

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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 ) .
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