Example sentences of "not be sure " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | It 's awkward having to come round and not be sure of finding you . |
| 2 | If you can not be sure of handling the glider safely , turn it out of the wind , hold the wing down and wait for help . |
| 3 | A delighted Mason could not be sure which punch ended Biggs 's interest in the proceedings and no one could be sure about the outcome as the bell approached . |
| 4 | Or perhaps I should say , ‘ Another of the Black Sumatras has done it ’ — for our three sooty chickens of this exotic breed are indistinguishable from one another , and we can not be sure which of them has excelled itself . |
| 5 | How long she had been there , we could not be sure , for if she sat with head and tail aligned along the wall , she was invisible from below , and only when she turned sideways did she come into view . |
| 6 | But Gallop had doubts , or rather confesses an ambivalence : ‘ But we can not be sure that this radical notion of ‘ heterosexuality' ’ is not just an alibi for the comforting norm' ( pp. 127 — 8 ) . |
| 7 | But Honderich is too busy allocating guilt to be discriminating in his investigations , with the usual result that one can not be sure if the right people have been convicted . |
| 8 | It is groaningly cold , possibly as low as — -225°C ( — -13°F ) , although we can not be sure as Tony 's thermometer is buried under a mound of tackle . |
| 9 | We can not be sure of how to interpret the results . |
| 10 | It is true that , without a test , a country like Iraq could not be sure that its bomb would go off . |
| 11 | But they could not be sure of winning and they know perfectly well that Mr Mitterrand has no reason to dissolve parliament so long as there is even a small risk that his party might lose . |
| 12 | He allows that , despite his claiming to have no consciousness of them , a court may punish a man for his drunken actions , but this is only because it can not be sure of distinguishing in the defendant 's plea ‘ what is real , what counterfeit ’ . |
| 13 | In fact , we can not be sure what it really means . ) |
| 14 | We can not be sure either about the speed of this mass Christianization or the means which brought it about . |
| 15 | But knowledge of the English burnings was widespread , and Scottish Protestants could not be sure that something similar might not now happen to them . |
| 16 | Although Rod Wallace opened the scoring from Strachan 's pull-back 10 minutes into the second half , nervous , unconvincing Leeds could not be sure of victory until both Lee Chapman and Cantona scored in a hectic final three minutes . |
| 17 | I can not be sure that he noticed all that , but he stared at it for a long time , getting down on his hands . |
| 18 | This rumour may have been based on someone having witnessed some signs of a growing affection between Richard and Margaret , but we can not be sure . |
| 19 | ‘ I 'm sorry to hear that , ’ the young man could not be sure , but it seemed that the child 's eyes were glittering with unshed tears . |
| 20 | When I saw him stood upright before me , I could not be sure to what extent he was hunched over due to infirmity and what extent due to the habit of accommodating the steeply sloped ceilings of the room . |
| 21 | Journalists do not mind being reminded so long as they do not think you are pressing them to write something they can not be sure will be published . |
| 22 | Sandison could not be sure how much Maidstone had had to drink that day — it was still a few minutes before noon — but he knew that he was sober enough to understand fully what was going on . |
| 23 | We can not be sure that , in choosing a place and time , God was making a point about gender . |
| 24 | In the simplest case , you may not be sure whether you should continue to turn up for work or not . |
| 25 | On a global level , client satisfaction is clear as client numbers are increasing , but still the CAB can not be sure that its own aims of offering accurate and impartial advice and information are fulfilled . |
| 26 | That is , we have chosen two parishes in our particular town — and we can not be sure how typical the parishes or the town are of the rest of the country . |
| 27 | But even if we tend to look for the scholarly , non-involved biography of the great man or woman we can not be sure that the work will be beyond criticism . |
| 28 | The main reason why it is not completely random is that one can not be sure in every list that the n th name does not have some significance . |
| 29 | Interviewers can not be sure of people 's age or social class before an interview is begun and so one can see the temptation of putting a woman down as under 35 if that is just what you need at the end of a hard day when the woman turns out in fact to be 38 . |
| 30 | We can not settle the theory of life histories because we can not be sure whether cave organisms put more effort into reproduction than do their relatives at the surface ; nor can we be sure whether they have reduced metabolic rates , which makes it difficult to sort out the question of adaptation . |