Example sentences of "serve [adv] [to-vb] the [noun sg] " in BNC.
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| 1 | However rhetorically brilliant , the critique which Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment offer is ultimately a totalizing discourse in which the dialectic struggles and twists against itself , serving only to tighten the knot which binds it . |
| 2 | It was increasingly argued that unnecessary State control of personal and community affairs was wrong in principle , serving merely to weaken the capacity of the individual to enhance life chances ; arguments not heard for perhaps half a century were rehearsed . |
| 3 | In England , also , complaints of the difficulty of finding capable diplomats can be heard until far into the eighteenth century ; and many agreed to serve only to put the government under a moral obligation to find some acceptable post for them at home on their return . |
| 4 | Bedford ..... 6 Wasps ...... 57 BEDFORD have now conceded 117 points in their last two matches and this latest reversal served only to illustrate the plight of a club who a few months ago were celebrating their arrival in the Courage First Division . |
| 5 | But if their frankly messy performance at the last Heavenly bash in December served only to illustrate the gulf that now exists between gamely played ‘ real ’ instruments and the lush sheen afforded the high tech brigade , then tonight their strengths were all their own . |
| 6 | The raid had no useful military purpose and served only to alert the Japanese … the intensive fortifications of Tarawa dates from that raid . ’ |
| 7 | Japanese intransigence , however , served only to harden the resolve of the island nations of the South Pacific . |
| 8 | She did what she could with her tousled mass of auburn curls , but when she twisted it into its usual topknot the starkness of the style served only to emphasise the weariness in her wide-set eyes , and with a little mutter of disgust she let the curls fall again , tumbling about her shoulders in riotous abandon . |
| 9 | The sea crossing served only to emphasise the idyll we left behind . |
| 10 | In so far as the reforms accelerated the growth of capitalism and differentiation between employer and employee among the peasantry , they served only to intensify the misery and oppression of the poorer peasants , to advance the struggle between rich and poor peasants . |
| 11 | In each case a working relationship had to be established between employment and education sectors , not without difficulty in certain areas where a lack of trust and respect between potential partners served only to highlight the depth of the cultural divide . |
| 12 | Luke Thackray 's warning served only to increase the sarcasm in his mother 's face . |
| 13 | In fact , however , their very rarity served only to make the procedure arbitrary in the extreme and , indeed , may have added to the reluctance of owners to offer land for development at all . |
| 14 | The increasing specification of sexual behaviour outside the family , which was a product of nineteenth-century sexology and criminal practice , served only to enhance the importance of those definitions which traversed the domestic hearth . |
| 15 | She did n't reject it , but it had become irrelevant , its comfort only a candle which served fitfully to illumine the dark . |
| 16 | In the event , however , the crisis served mainly to demonstrate the dominance of older pacifist traditions over revolutionary ideas . |
| 17 | Poetry , it appeared from Beethoven , was now a very junior partner to music ( " the union of music and poetry must always end in … a subordination of the latter " ) and served chiefly to stimulate the composer 's creative process . |
| 18 | During the early twentieth century and increasingly during the inter-war years the ideology of motherhood was reinforced legislatively by the marriage bar , which was applied chiefly to professional women and which served firmly to delineate the world of married women from that of men at a time when it was becoming widely acceptable for single middle class girls and women to go out to work . |
| 19 | In the Dynastic period it served primarily to embellish the jewellery worn in life and death by the royal family and household , most notably diadems , necklaces , pectorals and bracelets . |
| 20 | It became increasingly clear in the next two years that the change in leaders and policy had served only to weaken the Party still further . |
| 21 | Over the last ten years the gap between benefits and wages has widened and the new social security system has served only to heighten the disparity . |
| 22 | Verbal exchanges in the days leading up to the opening ceremony had served only to heighten the interest in the event . |
| 23 | Two meetings with Philip during the spring resulted in the truce being prolonged until midsummer but otherwise served only to widen the gap between the two sides . |
| 24 | This book does not cite all the cases on the subject , and does not cite a case where to do so would serve only to record the existence of that case , with no other purpose . |
| 25 | The flash has to have a manual override to be useful , as it will serve only to tell the operator when a photograph has been taken . |
| 26 | Yet presidential oratory , however well-intended and even eloquent , does not serve entirely to suppress the truth . |
| 27 | Contemporary perception was influenced by immediate demands and needs and these served indirectly to reinforce the determination to play a leading role in the world — a determination based on desire rather than understanding . |
| 28 | The series serves relentlessly to interrogate the concept of the portrait in its classic form as the portrait bust . |
| 29 | But the question then arises as to whether all this interactive effort serves only to facilitate the internalization of linguistic knowledge , as Long appears to imply , or whether it does not also develop the executive ability referred to earlier , whereby the learner can access that knowledge in a range of communicative contexts . |
| 30 | The current structure of local government , with its varying patterns of single-tier and two-tier authorities and annual and quadrennial elections , serves only to confuse the issue . |