Example sentences of "[adj] [subord] not [to-vb] " in BNC.

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1 In my prime I shifted my weight onto the front foot as the bowler approached the crease , being careful though not to commit myself to the front foot .
2 No demand , however , was made on us by the gate-keeper , the authorities being so liberal as not to charge persons for walking either on the roads or footpaths .
3 Their initial meeting at dinner in Hall was not quite accidental : the nature of the placement was such that strong scholarship candidates were more likely than not to find themselves sitting together .
4 Erm as desirable as that objective is , the fact of the matter is that inward investors , given the choice of the derelict industrial site in a town centre in North Yorkshire or an out of town motorway junction site to exaggerate the difference , in another part of the country is as likely as not to choose the other place .
5 Today 's newcomers are as likely as not to arrive from the opposite direction : businessmen seeking to escape the pollution , water shortages , high taxes and labour costs of southern California .
6 By fifty a married man or woman was as likely as not to have suffered widowhood , and would have already lost half his or her contemporaries : in contrast to a mere twentieth today .
7 Today an adolescent is probably as likely as not to belong to a family which is an uneasy mixture of the nuclear set-up and the institution known as serial marriage ( marriage , divorce , remarriage ) .
8 A common-sense assumption , so obvious as not to need labelling as such .
9 I shou 'd like a cloth one best if you please — I beg of your Sir to be so good as not to fail me this Cardinal by Wednesday , without fail , but let it be full yard long I beg , or else it will not do fail not on Wednesday , and in so doing you will very much oblige me .
10 They often suffered from vaginismus , but they invariably praised their husbands for being ‘ exceptionally kind ’ , passive , totally understanding and ‘ so good as not to bother me ’ .
11 Er but if they 're a sensing thinking person they will find it almost totally incomprehensible , that you 've been so lax as not to have actually worked out in detail erm you know what their job is ?
12 Thus contracts are not generally binding on the following people : persons who at the time of making the contract were either minors , or so insane or drunk as not to know what they were doing .
13 Doubly authentic , because I have often observed that where , these delicate questions are concerned most listeners are more inclined than not to accept the most improbable of two or three possible explanations for the vagaries of a person 's conduct .
14 Up to now the possibility had seemed so remote as not to need consideration — an order given by Hardy as a matter of course , accepted by Denis as a standard instruction in an operation of this nature .
15 In general , however , the contract of a mentally disordered person is fully binding on him unless the other party was aware that he was so insane as not to understand the nature of the transaction .
16 The sensitivity of the test is such that a diluted specimen may still give a positive result , but the contaminants will be so dilute as not to cause a problem .
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