Example sentences of "[adv] [det] [conj] a " in BNC.

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1 Better that than a coffin , ’ he whispered , adding as he leaned in to retrieve his fiddle : ‘ And if my coffin is half as comfortable ‘ t is a smooth journey I 'll be having to Paradise . ’
2 Not only that but a collective bargain is a method of suppressing individual differences between workers .
3 Not only that but a change in methods of working , in its ethos and what were seen as its privileges , such as index-linked pensions , was to follow .
4 Not only that but a drought in Maharashtra in 1987 and 1988 , probably the most severe of the century in the subcontinent , has caused barely a ripple of news interest in the world .
5 Such conditions could occur in a very big hydrogen bomb : the physicist John Wheeler once calculated that if one took all the heavy water in all the oceans of the world , one could build a hydrogen bomb that would compress matter at the center so much that a black hole would be created .
6 It would not matter so much if a Turkish president were just a figurehead .
7 Not surprisingly , in their rush they were disinclined to hump mounds of electrical equipment into the west with them , and would now find themselves without so much as a guitar string to their name , were it not for the warm-hearted generosity of the British thrash metal community .
8 Rather I cite it here as a historical antecedent whose very strangeness alerts us to several facts relevant to what follows : first , and most obviously , that sexual difference is not a biological given so much as a complex ideological history ; second , that current theories of sexual difference are of relatively recent origin , and quite probably still haunted by older views , including this one ; third , it suggests that ‘ before ’ sexual difference the woman was once ( and may still be ) feared in a way in which the homosexual now is — feared , that is , not so much , or only , because of a radical otherness , as because of an interior resemblance presupposing a certain proximity ; the woman then , as the homosexual in modern psychoanalytic discourse , is marked in terms of lesser or retarded development .
9 But seen from within , they appear to be like nothing so much as a mirror-image of the Elizabethan world picture : a little world , tightly organised into its own ranks and with its own rules , as rigid in its own way as the most elaborate protocol at court or ritual in church .
10 Scarcely pausing for thought , she sat herself down at the keyboard and , without so much as a sheet of music to look at , launched into Rachmaninov 's Second Piano Concerto , blushing deeply to the round of spontaneous applause .
11 Like other fellow scribblers whose squiggles seriously abuse the very title ‘ shorthand notebook ’ , I have nevertheless been generously given hours , sometimes even days , by sportsmen happy enough to rabbit on without so much as a penny piece being mentioned .
12 Like other fellow scribblers whose squiggles seriously abuse the very title ‘ shorthand notebook ’ , I have nevertheless been generously given hours , sometimes even days , by sportsmen happy enough to rabbit on without so much as a penny piece being mentioned .
13 We had to pay a $300 cash deposit , refundable on delivery , or entirely lost if there was so much as a cigarette burn in the carpet .
14 No one imagined that Mr Bush would intervene as abruptly as he did , or that Mr Kaifu would go off to Palm Springs without so much as a by-your-leave to the party barons .
15 ‘ If you 'll pardon the correction , not so much as a million , ’ said one of the lady lodgers .
16 They had n't been hurt , not so much as a graze on them , yet when the all-clear sounded , they came out of their buildings and stood on their street with blank eyes that seemed to stare inwards .
17 ‘ Not eating nor drinking anything , not even so much as a crumb .
18 Occasionally , in spite of the long time which has gone by without so much as a cuddle , you have a dreadful day and you just do not feel in the mood .
19 He had learned to bear their ridicule without so much as a tear , but the names Sweetheart called him when she was really angry could make his body hurt like a bad pain on the inside .
20 Nothing improves plants so much as a pleasant setting — I have a large lump of tufa , a porous limestone rock , planted up with saxifrages , as a centre piece in one of my arid corners .
21 Would you prefer to move to a flat — one without so much as a balcony and with no windowsills — or to concrete your garden over and spend your days watching your neighbours at work ?
22 Doctor Tinsley , my old medical man , absolutely forbade me to lift any kind of weight , not so much as a shopping basket . ’
23 No comments whatsoever could be found in the first soundings of reactions ‘ which even provided so much as a hint that some or other people 's comrade was in agreement with the attempted assassination ’ .
24 I have gone through this procedure in some detail , not so much as a practical guide as to how to make the arrangements , but to demonstrate how much practical activity surrounds someone 's death .
25 You do not have a property investment market so much as a lease investment market .
26 For our part , we appeared to take for granted the Germans ' total ignorance of our presence , for we had no air-raid drill , nor did we have a single air-raid shelter , slit-trench , sandbag blast-wall , nor even so much as a steel helmet — only a large poster which read :
27 Every moment I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be missing , by so much as a second , the vital news I both longed for and dreaded .
28 For there grow no Trees , no not so much as a Shrub on St. Kilda ’ .
29 It has long been held to look like a cello , but the elliptical window above the door looks like a beak to me , so that with the round windows above the upper façade looks nothing so much as a chick wearing a Napoleonic hat .
30 To Robyn 's eye it resembled nothing so much as a medieval painting of hell — though it was hard to say whether the workers looked more like devils or the damned .
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