Example sentences of "[vb past] [vb pp] [prep] first " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | She 'd decided at first that her brother deserved what was coming to him , but on reflection no one deserved to be thrown at Guido 's mercy . |
| 2 | He has had to gamble on selling before he can buy , that 's why he got rid of first Ray Houghton and then Dean Saunders . |
| 3 | Although his manner appeared reserved on first meeting , he could be a genial , friendly , and charming companion . |
| 4 | Mrs Bottomley said that in her South-West Surrey constituency she had heard at first hand many stories of personal anguish , crisis and despair in the last hard year . |
| 5 | The competition was to take place in August and , although she was for ever panicking about what they still could n't do , she tended to overlook how far they had come from first beginnings . |
| 6 | True , he had struggled at first to satisfy his beautiful young bride ; he had been too long a bachelor and too set in his ways . |
| 7 | The girl had struggled at first , but Bernice had reassured her : They 'll bring me to you in just a minute , she 'd said . |
| 8 | ‘ I thought that they were extinct , ’ Zach had said on first seeing her riding it . |
| 9 | " Confound it , Lovat , " she had said upon first setting eyes on Topaz . |
| 10 | This was immediately confirmed by a sound similar to that which my own shoulders had made on first entering the narrow space . |
| 11 | The Frenchman 's dark aquiline features and unsmiling silences made him think of history-book pictures he 'd seen of the warrior heroes of ancient Greece and Rome , and the dismay he had felt at first when their car had struck the Annamese villager had increased his sense of awe . |
| 12 | When he recalled how he had felt on first seeing her he had to push the sinful thoughts out of his mind . |
| 13 | Let's go and see it , he had said , and she had recoiled at first . |
| 14 | Engineers , it was often said , only carried out ideas that other people had thought of first . |
| 15 | If your household is likely to expand in any way it might be cheaper in the long run to buy a larger model than the more modest affair you had thought of first . |
| 16 | Or so he had thought at first , hearing her voice , looking round the well-furnished rooms , the shelves full of old china figures , in her polished house . |
| 17 | He was altogether too handsome , she had thought at first . |
| 18 | It had n't been much of a job after all ; he had thought at first from the sound of it that it might mean travel , but it did n't . |
| 19 | He had thought at first that the man was lost and required instructions , but realised after the words had blown away that it was a quiet inquiry for cash . |
| 20 | Thomas had thought at first that it was a shadow . |
| 21 | I wished I had got in first by telling her I no longer found her sexually attractive . |
| 22 | The earl had got in first on this wonderful anchorage , and the advantage remained with his town . |
| 23 | Downing Street had originally put in a request for the Bridal Suite , only to discover that Jeffrey Archer had got in first . |
| 24 | Though he was a college Conservative of a patriotic and nationalist kind , he had shown at first no sign of the bitter and obsessive anti-Semitism that became the hallmark of his speaking and writing . |
| 25 | Shelby did n't like Ferrari ; like plenty of others before and after , he had experienced at first hand Enzo Ferrari 's withering contempt for lesser mortals . |
| 26 | A friend indicated that the Army had seemed at first to understand when the WRAC driver said she feared other Paratroopers would victimise her for ‘ squealing ’ on their pals . |
| 27 | The reason that Schrödinger 's and Heisenberg 's versions of quantum mechanics had seemed at first sight different from each other ( see p. 14 ) was that they had chosen to use contrasting extreme possibilities . |
| 28 | Clare remembered how she had seemed at first to be constrained in all her movements and jerky , almost as if her stammer manifested itself through her body as well . |
| 29 | He quickly realised that , tactically , the situation at Verdun was not quite as desperate as it had seemed at first sight . |
| 30 | It was written in a frantic one month burst and sounded hurried on first hearing . |