Example sentences of "of [adv] a few " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | One of man 's great intellectual adventures — the exploration and understanding of his own nervous system — is progressing at a rate undreamed of only a few decades ago . |
| 2 | Mr Murphy says eligibility levels which took account of variations between households and actual , rather than assumed , figures for tax and housing , could be definitively assessed by further analysis of detailed Family Expenditure Survey statistics at the cost of only a few thousand pounds . |
| 3 | The daily body rhythms are timed similarly in different individuals , and in the same individual on different days , with regular differences of only a few hours between the timing of , say , the body temperature rhythm in ‘ larks ’ and ‘ owls ’ , for example . |
| 4 | These differences in athletic performance might not be very large , a matter of only a few per cent , but for world-class athletes , the difference between a world record and a mediocre performance can be only fractional . |
| 5 | She and her companion lived in a paddock of only a few acres and so required daily feed of grain and hay . |
| 6 | Not only has much explanation had to be included , but it is also difficult to make many useful comments after a visit of only a few days . |
| 7 | Blue whales are no longer hunted , but their numbers were depleted to such an extent in the past that present populations ( perhaps of only a few hundred individuals ) may be too small to recover . |
| 8 | He could hear the loud yet muffled interchanges between his father , John Carter , and his stepmother of only a few months , Rhoda . |
| 9 | Roman sculptors appear to have made use of only a few set measuring points , which sometimes survive , raised off the surface like pimples . |
| 10 | A plasmid is even smaller than a virus , and it normally consists of only a few genes . |
| 11 | So volcanic rocks are composed of only a few mineral groups , each group having its own characteristic atomic structure . |
| 12 | In the space of only a few years , they regularly flitted around Manchester . |
| 13 | It is particularly appropriate for young patients with diabetes of only a few years ' duration and without complications . |
| 14 | But the ground conditions in some parts of Europe make good results extremely difficult to obtain : some areas of Portugal , for instance , have field sizes of only a few metres and exhibit multi-level and multi-seasonal cropping . |
| 15 | Hydrocarbon exploration in overthrust belts is encouraged by these results because the highly disturbed and sometimes metamorphosed rocks of the near-surface have been shown to overlie extensive areas of flat-lying and relatively undisturbed strata , separated by a fundamental detachment zone which is commonly at a depth of only a few kilometres . |
| 16 | As breeding birds Moorhens are common , occurring wherever there is water ; even ponds of only a few square yards frequently hold breeding pairs . |
| 17 | Its telescope will have a mirror 60 cm across , and will be cooled by liquid helium to a temperature of only a few degrees above absolute zero ; and its detectors will be sensitive to wavelengths up to a maximum of 120 micrometres . |
| 18 | Many small birds have escaped with the loss of only a few feathers because of a smartly delivered peck with a sharp beak . |
| 19 | Miraculously , however , the books hold together , with the loss of only a few pages , until the end of the year . |
| 20 | But mistaken loan decisions or pricing policies swiftly come home to roost in an organisation with a balance sheet of only a few hundred million . |
| 21 | In fact they have to be trained — starting with distances of only a few feet from , and within sight of , the loft . |
| 22 | The centre of the Sun is at a temperature of fifteen million degrees and at a density 150 times that of water ; in Richter 's experiment , the density of the gases would be a mere fraction of water density and the spark that was supposed to ignite the thermonuclear explosion would have a temperature of only a few thousand degrees . |
| 23 | The scientists stressed that it was little more than a laboratory curiosity , the energy coming from the fusion of only a few hydrogen atoms and ‘ was scarcely enough to register on highly sensitive measuring instruments ’ ; although the process had no immediate commercial value it suggested ‘ possible industrial uses of immeasurable importance ’ . |
| 24 | Sometimes the most immense-changes are given to us in a short story of only a few pages : Chekhov 's ‘ Let Me Sleep ’ sees an exhausted , brutalised servant-girl murder a baby in six pages ; Katherine Mansfield 's ‘ Revelations ’ sees a woman who longs for freedom and independence rush for security to an unloved but ardent suitor — because everything feels strange at her hairdresser 's , where she learns that a tragedy has occurred — in seven pages . |
| 25 | A good idea can therefore be brought to a successful and polished conclusion in a very short time at the cost of only a few sheets of paper and with the minimum of effort . |
| 26 | With the declaration of the Schuman Plan in May 1950 , European union was to acquire a new momentum and dimension , one that would proceed on a narrower front with the involvement of only a few countries , and in policy terms with a much more specific focus than that held by those who dreamed of European political federation . |
| 27 | Yet within the space of only a few years , all this optimism , not for the first time , was in tatters — against a world backdrop that was also changing : the waning of American economic strength ; the rise of Japan ; the rapid expansion of decolonialisation ; new superpower hostility with the Cuban missile crisis ; the slowing down of economic growth and indications of problems to come . |
| 28 | Today , the kestrel , if not endangered , is certainly one of the world 's rarest birds of prey , with a population of only a few hundred . |
| 29 | Indeed , access of only a few P. falciparum antigens to class I molecules , and the tendency of CTL responses to be focused on one or few foreign antigens , as observed in some other infections , may tend to magnify HLA class I differences in malaria susceptibility : LSA-1 is abundant within the parasitophorous vacuole . |
| 30 | Its bases around the Bay were staffed by a total of only a few hundred men . |