Example sentences of "a [det] [noun] at a " in BNC.
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| 1 | Take this tiny sample : Leopold Bloom , the Dublin Jew , with his touching mixture of timorousness and courage , has looked in for a few moments at a church as a Mass is ending . |
| 2 | The Glass-Steagall Act and the McFadden Act prevented banks from operating in more than a few states at a time , and also restricted their scope for involvement in the securities markets and other financial services — areas where their international competitors already had wide powers . |
| 3 | If the bottom is not too weedy I constantly twitch the bait along the bottom a few inches at a time . |
| 4 | LAST WEEK I WANDERED off , rather against my better judgment , to kill a few hours at a thing called the Country Living Fair . |
| 5 | Hearing people are members of the dominant culture , who usually wish to preserve their hearing status and whose length of stay among deaf people is often no more than a few hours at a time . |
| 6 | ‘ The barrow now belongs to you , so never let it or the pitch out of your sight for more than a few hours at a time . ’ |
| 7 | Although Frankie had been dozing , he was too hungry to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time . |
| 8 | Now , for just a few minutes at a time , focus on this image — and stir in desire . |
| 9 | TOWARDS the end of her life my mother was in hospital , a victim of Alzheimer 's Disease , a severe diabetic , unable to walk and increasingly unable to remain conscious for more than a few minutes at a time . |
| 10 | These played for only a few minutes at a time . |
| 11 | But within a few days , all her mother 's youth and vigour were gone and the energetic , independent woman whose health and dependability she had taken for granted for so long had turned into a helpless invalid , unable to hold down the thinnest gruel , unable to sleep more than a few minutes at a time , unable even to answer the calls of nature on her own , so that she had to be lifted like a child onto the pot and lifted back into the jumble of stinking bedclothes . |
| 12 | A breathless , pervasive sense of heat possessed her body at every return of the memory and she was unable to remain settled and at ease in her seat for more than a few minutes at a time . |
| 13 | He 'll cry long and hard , and though you can soothe him for a few minutes at a time , hours can pass without you ever really silencing the cries . |
| 14 | The apparatus required for imprinting , and then for measuring the efficacy of the imprinting response , was large and elaborate ; it was impossible to train more than a few birds at a time . |
| 15 | But since he can think only of a few things at a time , the routine function of his noble gift of reason must be to correct spontaneous reactions and keep them running in an intelligent direction . |
| 16 | So in his late anthology , Confucius to Cummings ( New York , 1964 , with Marcella Spann ) , he explicitly preferred George Chapman 's Homer to pope 's , even though he had admitted that Chapman is unreadable , except for a few pages at a time . |
| 17 | Once he went below , if she turned the boat in that direction , just a few degrees at a time , would he notice ? |
| 18 | The three of them began to creep slowly down the hill , moving from tree to tree , but no more than a few yards at a time . |
| 19 | Those of the nightshade , tomato and several other plants , however , do so through a small opening at the tip , through which the pollen falls a few grains at a time . |
| 20 | There are undoubtedly great advantages to the student if a staff member transmits his ideas and experience to only a few individuals at a time in a tutorial session . |
| 21 | Poach all the mixture a few spoonfuls at a time , draining the cooked ‘ islands ’ on a folded tea towel . |
| 22 | Part of the explanation is that artificial selection changes only a few characteristics at a time , whereas in nature many changes occur simultaneously . |
| 23 | ‘ This young lad was getting people to mind Sam for a few days at a time . |
| 24 | The idea is to spend a few days at a hotel and all you have to pay for are the meals and any extras , such as wine . |
| 25 | Doubtless many iron workers put in a few days at a time on different sites ; until quite recently putting out much of the work to contract in small stints on a ‘ labour-only ’ basis was a regular practice in mineral extraction , so leading tax collectors to class earnings as profits rather than wages . |
| 26 | Initially for a few days at a time , then for weeks , and eventually whole months . |
| 27 | This means , of course , that the kind of contradiction I mentioned earlier is rarely discovered by the average fundamentalist because their one-dimensional way of tackling the text , a few verses at a time , will not lead them to make these uncomfortable and , I think , liberating discoveries . |
| 28 | Before the 1965 Immigration Act , Mirpuri and Bengali families would send their sons to England for a few months or a few years at a time . |
| 29 | We may hold them again at a price a hundred times their worth to us , for a few months , a few years at a pinch , but French they will still be , and in the end we must leave go of them . |
| 30 | First , only a handful of people have spent more than a few weeks at a time in space . |