Example sentences of "be [adv] but [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | So sharply have the battle lines been drawn between Soviet , liberal and libertarian historians that fruitful debate between them has been all but impossible . |
| 2 | She had been all but asleep and possibly incoherent . |
| 3 | Jones 's book remained untouched on the shelves of Northumbria 's modest library in its first two years , even though it had good reviews ; and the influence of his research has been all but negligible . |
| 4 | Leafing through them , I could n't see any obvious lies ; he had n't taught me to say anything obscene instead of ‘ Excuse me ’ or ‘ Can you direct me to the railway station , please ? ’ , though I 'd have thought the temptation would have been all but irresistible . |
| 5 | Summer is all but gone , school 's in for winter and already there 's movement on the big name concert scene that 's been all but dormant of late . |
| 6 | MOST spiders weave webs that are all but invisible , but some species include a very conspicuous broad band of silk across the middle of the web . |
| 7 | The adonis blue and silver-skipper butterflies are all but extinct . |
| 8 | External frames are all but defunct in the UK because most have accepted that the ergonomically contoured internal frame sack is much more stable to carry than an external frame pack , even at the expense of some loss of ventilation to the back . |
| 9 | The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes . |
| 10 | In Britain a party 's first-category candidates somehow find themselves adopted for seats they are all but certain to win , second-category candidates for marginals and third-category candidates for seats they have no hope of winning . |
| 11 | At the far left-hand end of the scale are events which are all but certain , such as the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow — the subject of G. H. Hardy 's halfpenny bet . |
| 12 | The transmissions use those soliton waves we told you about way back in summer 1990 ( CI No 1,459 ) , which are electronically induced and never lose their shape as they whiz through optical glass fibre , so that signalling errors are all but non-existent , obviating the need for costly error-correction equipment , which also slows down transmission . |
| 13 | Features such as kerning , tracking , inter-letter and inter-word spacing control , ligatures and hung punctuation are all but unknown in page makeup yet no typographer would be without them . |
| 14 | But now to reality , for the ‘ classic ’ carp fishing days are all but dead . |
| 15 | Goblins are so weak and vulnerable that small units are all but useless , while the principle of deep ranks and narrow frontage is essential for combat survival . |
| 16 | Yet a surprisingly large proportion of market research is still based on the spending patterns of the baby boomers ' parents , and so implicitly assumes that they are all but identical . |
| 17 | If anything , it provided some pleasant surprises — about , for instance , the ability of large crowds to demonstrate peacefully , and the ability of Hong Kong-financed factories in southern China to be all but unaffected by turmoil in Peking . |
| 18 | The odds against him were all but unimaginable . |
| 19 | Weighing it all up , Ramsay came to the conclusion that the chances of capturing the usurper at this stage were all but non-existent , and that their wisest course was to return at once with his dire news to the main Scots array in Annandale or wherever it had reached by now . |
| 20 | There was one girl in particular who interested Harriet , a small girl with hair cut gamin short , whose face was so expressive that it seemed to reflect every one of the emotions that they were all feeling , these midinettes who had basted hemlines and stitched hooks and eyes into place , positioned trimmings and sewed them into place with such tiny stitches that they were all but invisible to the naked eye . |
| 21 | He caught a good couple of pounds of roach on ledgered casters from bites that were all but invisible . |
| 22 | The shutters were all but useless . |
| 23 | The car 's hydraulics soughed as they tried to compensate for the sudden shift of the bubble but against that gale they were all but useless , and the bubble-canopy clanged on the car 's shell . |
| 24 | It would be revealing to know more about the lessons Mr Yeltsin draws from this historical experience , yet the experience — along with Khrushchev 's name — is all but absent from the book . |
| 25 | Mr Calfa , aged 43 , is a Slovak , as is President Gustav Husak , whose imminent departure is all but certain given his association with the Warsaw Pact invasion of the country in 1968 . |
| 26 | A directly evident proposition is one , in Chisholm 's terminology , which is either identical with or entailed by a true contingent proposition which is all but certain . |
| 27 | ‘ The fate of McMullen is all but certain . |
| 28 | Once drained , which takes anything from four to eight hours , the cheese can be eaten immediately , with or without the addition of fresh cream ; or it can be left draining until it is all but dry , when it can be kept for cooking , or salted and flavoured for consumption as a mild cheese . |
| 29 | But if the situation Benjamin describes is too open , its constitutive relationships too direct and insufficiently mediated , Adorno 's net , by contrast , is so tightly drawn , its equations so perfect , its circle so complete , that any change , critique or differentiation of meaning or response is all but impossible . |
| 30 | One of the difficulties with classical theory is that there are so many other interacting ‘ imperfections ’ at work that to measure the impact of a single tax is all but impossible . |