Example sentences of "he could [not/n't] [verb] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | But he could n't tolerate incompetence . ’ |
| 2 | He could n't speak Spanish and they could n't speak English . |
| 3 | He could n't speak Arabic , as he 'd been brought up in Zanzibar . |
| 4 | He could n't tell direction in the fog . |
| 5 | The scheme the mother and this brother were plotting entailed Sien somehow , and though he could n't make head nor tail of it he feared the worst . |
| 6 | ‘ I 'm sorry , ’ she swiftly apologised , when she could see he could n't make head or tail of what she was talking about . |
| 7 | ‘ And if he could n't make love to his wife because she was paralysed from the waist down … ’ |
| 8 | He could n't recognize love . |
| 9 | He could n't waste time in useless persuasion . |
| 10 | HEARTBROKEN husband Robin Hood killed himself because he could n't face life without his murdered wife ‘ Maid ’ Marion . |
| 11 | ‘ He could n't handle Mum , he could n't handle me , ’ John says . |
| 12 | A pensioner was told he could n't watch TV while his cheque for a new licence was being cleared . |
| 13 | Lou Macari signed a three year contract with Celtic this afternoon then told Scotland Today he would walk away if he could n't bring success to the club in that time . |
| 14 | I could do his job any time but he could n't do mine . |
| 15 | He could n't dismiss the images , he could n't stay Time 's hand as it turned page after page of that memory-album until tears flooded his eyes at the scenes recalled : his mother , her brown hair screwed into a bun at the back of her head , taking him to see a house at Edgeworthstown where she said a famous woman writer had lived ; he had n't paid much attention , not being interested in books then , but when he grew older he read Maria Edgeworth 's novels and went again for himself to gaze at her home . |
| 16 | Yet he could n't bear failure again , with the whole squadron watching . |
| 17 | The day Richard started teaching , he was so nervous he could n't eat breakfast . |
| 18 | In an interview with La Stampa yesterday , Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA chief Carlo De Benedetti condemned the pervasive system of political corruption , which he says obligated Olivetti to pay bribes or lose contracts , as ‘ having reduced Italy to a state worse than the Third World ’ : he says that at the last shareholders meeting earlier this year , he had to deny any bribery because he could n't preview information to the shareholders that was intended for the legal authorities ; he says that facing the judges , he felt liberated from a weight — ‘ then I felt a sense of justice — it pleased me to be there , ’ noting that when the company decided that the demands of the postal service for slush funds became too extreme and Olivetti stopped paying , ‘ we did n't sell another machine to the Post — we had arrived at the absurd point where , if we did n't pay , we did n't work and the moment we quit paying , we did n't work any more ’ . |
| 19 | Pardy was right and he could n't prove handwriting , because the letter had been formed of scraps of newsprint in the classic way . |
| 20 | He could n't string Fly 's presence and his doubts together long enough to know what one had to do with the other . |
| 21 | He could n't imagine Topaz fainting . |
| 22 | He could n't play cricket or any other game for that matter and he had never been fishing . |
| 23 | He could n't see curvature in the third dimension . |
| 24 | His parents Kang and Bi explained how little Sheng spent his days looking out the window at the other children playing , knowing he could n't take part . |
| 25 | He went all over the place looking , but he could n't get hold of it I mean it was obviously it was something that he made himself but it was beautiful ! |
| 26 | He could n't get bail and he 's now lost those twenty months |
| 27 | ‘ To find out why he could n't get planning permission , I expect , ’ Frank answered almost gleefully . |
| 28 | ‘ Well , what is wrong with him , ’ she tells me , ‘ is that because he could n't find heroin he used a substitute . |
| 29 | But not too concerned that he could n't find time to drop into Simon Butcher 's to have his picture taken . ’ |
| 30 | Then I discovered he could n't read music . |