Example sentences of "[adv] so [det] [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | With boys in unskilled employment , the intention was not so much to impart skills , ‘ as to retain [ them ] at an impressionable age and to mould and discipline their character ’ , and in such cases specialization or technical training would be out of place . |
| 2 | The primary function of the teacher is not so much to impart information as to help the student to assimilate the course of reading and lesson notes and to stimulate the questioning attitude of mind by every means at his/her disposal . |
| 3 | The results are sought not so much to enrich the domain of research with fundamentally new findings as to demonstrate the validity of some new form of automatic processing . |
| 4 | Blown-up extracts from contemporary Paris newspapers , on panels larger than the works of art on display , suggest that the district 's sudden fame was not so much to do with art or philosophy , but the novel phenomenon of la jeunesse . |
| 5 | But perhaps this not so much to do with ‘ stars ’ as the fact that related people often share the same preferences when planning their families . |
| 6 | They suggest that in many circumstances , and particularly more recently , the central problems facing management are not so much to do with control over labour but are much more to do with such matters as obtaining orders for products , getting the design right , innovating , and handling their relations with the capital market . |
| 7 | Most recent models of 6mm collet routers now produce around twice the power of this model ; this is not so much to speed the work , but more to improve the quality and variety of profiles made by cutters . |
| 8 | If the weather was fine Maud liked to walk in Hyde Park , not so much to see as to be seen , her small hand slotted lightly into he bend of his arm . |
| 9 | My ghetto-blasterette , loaded with Chuck Berry , is constantly by my side today ( apologies to the neighbours ) , not so much to lift my spirits , as to keep me awake . |
| 10 | In order not to seem too dictatorial , and perhaps to conform with some grass-roots grocer-Tory image , ministers have sometimes spoken as if their aim was not so much to take powers to themselves ( and thus away from Local Authorities ) as to give powers to parents . |
| 11 | Their role is not so much to perform on their own as to lead and embellish the chants . |
| 12 | In the 1840s the aim would have been not so much to save the debtor 's soul as to save his creditors the expense and boredom of having to sue him . |
| 13 | She seemed to be asking not so much to save herself as because of some instinct for the men 's friendship . |
| 14 | But if we listen to them carefully , it is evident that they parade their doubts not so much to resolve them as to evoke public sympathy and to gain that sense of identity which comes from subconsciously defining themselves by their problems . |
| 15 | She would have known , as Diana discovered too late , that Camilla 's famous vetting of Charles 's girlfriends was not so much to assess their potential as a royal bride but to see how much of a threat they posed to her friendship with Prince Charles . |
| 16 | Peter hesitated in the hall , not so much to eavesdrop as to prepare himself for a noiseless ascent of the stairs . |
| 17 | It 's not so much to ask , is it ? |
| 18 | In legal matters there is usually a certain room for difference of opinion , and even though there be positive authority against your view , the examiner is anxious not so much to test the details of your knowledge as to assess your ability to argue in a lawyer-like way . |
| 19 | All the Cairo world loved a good funeral and the bystanders stopped what they were doing , not so much to let the procession pass but to join in the fun . |
| 20 | This is done , it seems , not so much to exercise their powers per se , but to counterbalance the perceived affronts to their dignity . |
| 21 | Thus one might treat it as an argument that is designed not so much to challenge the meaningfulness of applying identity to objects qua ontological existents " out there " as to expose the difficulties of drawing a clear distinction between the numerical and the qualitative ( or species ) identity in relation to such objects . |
| 22 | It had been carefully gauged , not so much to reveal anything about himself , but rather to reveal something about them . |
| 23 | This particular passage ends with the sentence : ‘ the purpose of the underground press is ‘ not so much to dissent as to disrupt ’ , and its editorial policies explicitly and implicitly seek to overthrow society as we know it , and of this it makes no secret ’ . |
| 24 | In the passage quoted from Whatever Happened to Sex ? when Richard Neville was discussed above , Mrs Whitehouse described his book Playpower as ‘ the handbook of the international drop-outs ’ , the purpose of the underground as ‘ not so much to dissent as to disrupt ’ and the implicit and explicit goal contained in OZ editorial policies as the overthrow of society . |
| 25 | The key is not so much to end up with the right plan as to engage in strategic thinking . |
| 26 | The father 's real purpose in allowing me to visit the family was not so much to get help , but to recoup the £40 he had spent on satanist scriptures , which he wanted to sell to me . |
| 27 | Not so much to get over the final break-up of her relationship with Paul — that had been inevitable , she realised that now . |
| 28 | The aim of this approach is not so much to offer care and protection , but to help people to reach their ‘ full potential ’ . |
| 29 | It has been stressed that there are strong forces in favour of the maintenance of existing policy , and that many new initiatives are in fact derived from concerns not so much to innovate as to correct the imperfections of existing policies . |
| 30 | Their aim is not so much to alleviate the horrors of war as to make war so horrific that potential aggressors will fear to resort to it at all . |