Example sentences of "be [adv] [subord] [adj] " in BNC.
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| 31 | He could not afford too many jaunts like this — especially as his father had been less than joyful at his return . |
| 32 | Its population at this time can hardly have been less than 50,000 and may easily have been well over 60,000 . |
| 33 | Ali Cemali , who had in the years between 888 and 891 moved on to other posts , was the first appointee to the new medrese and , though his salary is not specified , the course of his career to this point suggests that it can not have been less than 50 akce a day . |
| 34 | Although incomes had to be given , assessment of the personal property of ‘ spiritual men ’ was not stipulated , and since the clergy were customarily taxed more heavily than the laity a good many of them may have been less than forthcoming . |
| 35 | Alix admitted what Liz already knew , that she and Sebastian had been less than happy , that the idyll had been less golden than it looked . |
| 36 | In 1929–30 it had been less than 200,000 tons . ’ |
| 37 | Intel Corp has been less than enthusiastic about the future of its i860 — getting the 80586 into battle readiness in such a short space of time has taken up much of the company 's research and development resources in any case . |
| 38 | His armed forces are still dependent on non-Arab personnel , secrecy surrounds the extent of military ties with the United States and Oman has been less than enthusiastic in supporting Arab League action against the Camp David accords . |
| 39 | Though not strictly competitive , the selection of schools inevitably involves comparisons according to a range of formal and informal criteria , and since funds have until recently always been less than sufficient to serve all deserving cases , an element of competition is inescapable . |
| 40 | After Independence , Partition and the departure of most British and Muslim cadres from the ICS , Nehru , the new Prime Minister , who had previously been less than sympathetic to the ICS , came increasingly to depend upon men such as Pillai , who — embodying the Service 's traditions of discretion and loyalty — had no difficulty in serving a new master . |
| 41 | He 'd never had a serious illness since a bout of pneumonia in childhood , and he 'd never been less than whole . |
| 42 | Some companies never go to the new issues market , and it has been calculated that ‘ in the past decade , in no single year have ordinary share issues accounted for as much as 10 per cent of the sources of capital funds , and the average has been less than half that amount ’ . |
| 43 | Since nationalization there have been 19 , and their average period in office has been less than two-and-a-half years , half that of their British counterparts . |
| 44 | This was something else Clive had been less than truthful about . |
| 45 | Perhaps the individuals involved were too obtuse in applying conventional planning models with little regard for local feeling , and they may have been less than adroit in their handling of public opinion . |
| 46 | So sharply have the battle lines been drawn between Soviet , liberal and libertarian historians that fruitful debate between them has been all but impossible . |
| 47 | She had been all but asleep and possibly incoherent . |
| 48 | 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 . |
| 49 | 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 . |
| 50 | 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 . |
| 51 | I am pleased to have the chance to complete the enclosed questionnaire and let you know what I think of the NatWest bank and why I am less than satisfied with the service received . |
| 52 | The hardships we are suffering in the recession are nothing compared to the hell of the Bosnian detention camps , and if we can not find the cash to help what amounts to very few of them then we are morally as well as economically bankrupt . |
| 53 | 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 . |
| 54 | The adonis blue and silver-skipper butterflies are all but extinct . |
| 55 | 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 . |
| 56 | The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes . |
| 57 | 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 . |
| 58 | 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 . |
| 59 | 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 . |
| 60 | 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 . |