Example sentences of "[verb] by [adv] few [noun] " in BNC.

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1 In the nineteenth century , most land in Britain was owned by very few landowners .
2 It entails moreover the risk that if the list is long voting will tend to be little more than a popularity poll , with most votes heavily concentrated on the best-known candidates , leaving the election of others to be decided by relatively few votes , cast by electors probably unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole .
3 A large proportion of closure and redundancy decisions are made by relatively few employers .
4 Making a clean break is easier too ; critical acceleration between 40–60 mph and 50–70 mph can be matched by very few cars indeed .
5 An inverted file is the usual choice , but when there are many attributes , each of which is used by relatively few records , it will be worth considering multilist files .
6 This measure effectively makes competitive tendering compulsory for designated services , replacing the former ( largely discretionary ) powers which had been used by relatively few authorities in specific areas ( Ascher , 1987 , especially ch. 7 ; Stoker , 1988 ) .
7 A small number of other subjects offered by relatively few applicants ( particularly in the areas of languages and mathematics ) are also counted as approved subjects .
8 And if one could even name it , its name would only ever be understood by very few persons .
9 Once again competitive prices were highly ranked by comparatively few DGMs ( 24 per cent ) though the same proportion of respondents were experiencing problems in obtaining comparative cost data as in the first year .
10 His language was one spoken by very few foreigners , and indeed Latin had remained the learned tongue there as in Germany .
11 This tends to compound problems caused by too few tokens ( cf. 6.8.2 ) .
12 But the dozens of optical and radio observatories on the ground are complemented by very few astronomy satellites .
13 Physics was chosen as a representative subject , not only because it is studied by so few women , and is therefore a typically masculine discipline , but also because it tends to be regarded as the most objective , rigorous and , indeed , successful of the pure sciences .
14 From Wagner 's results we would conclude , however , that building competitive position or market share is really successfully achieved by relatively few businesses .
15 But the narrow out-crops on either side of Scotland have been honoured by comparatively few publications , though their story is much more exciting .
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