Curious, thought the manageress, she was the last person you would expect to waltz in quite that late without so much as an excuse. |
|
I think it's a fairly uncontentious point that doesn't need arguing so much as it needs action. |
|
Without so much as flinching, Bri had the car in drive and was screeching out of the parking lot with the pedal to the metal. |
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Other Faculties, notably Arts and Science, did not limit numbers so much as accept any student who met certain criteria. |
|
Neither gentleman is ungallant enough to so much as hint when discussing her performance that her voice has been dubbed. |
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He remained, wallet intact, unharmed by so much as a single scratch or nip. |
|
One thing this seems to imply is that that soul is not the mystical animating spirit of the person, so much as their conscience. |
|
One man ignored the caution and dropped onto his stomach without so much as waving a flashlight. |
|
All of which makes me feel slightly queasy and disinclined to buy so much as a new face cloth. |
|
Not so much as an advert in the small ads section of the Accrington Herald coincided with the launch. |
|
If I were on trial and I got even so much as a hint that the judge might be biased against me, I'd certainly raise a stink about it. |
|
In a phrase, he did not want to be a Communist so much as he wanted not to be a bourgeois. |
|
In this environment, unsoftened by so much as a cushion or a curtain, his amplified rock soundtrack echoes and re-echoes. |
|
Online, audiences or communities don't necessarily build so much as grow or accrete. |
|
What won our affection towards this restaurant was not its undeniable quality so much as its unquestionable quirkiness. |
|
Not only will we not be cheek-to-cheek, you will not get so much as a do-si-do. |
|
Which is more than can be said for the DJ, who made it through the evening without so much as a murmur. |
|
Remind me to find out the name of that flooring company so I can be sure never to buy so much as a carpet tile from it. |
|
She had not been ill, if she ever got so much as a sniffle I would take her straight to the doctors. |
|
Neither he nor Bridge had so much as a sniff of international football six months ago. |
|
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They actually repulse me so much that I seriously want to vomit if I so much as see one. |
|
Since then Bonds has refused to speak so much as a single word to the magazine. |
|
McCann then had the audacity to look up and whip it into the far corner without so much as a second thought. |
|
Not so much as a single head pic of a female footballer managed to creep into the sporting briefs. |
|
This recipe is rich and flavoursome, yet you needn't chop so much as an onion to make it. |
|
His will left everything to his elder daughter and did not so much as mention Ann. |
|
Nowadays, women think that they cannot so much as rake a few leaves without adorning themselves in a pair of pants. |
|
The guard walks away briskly, passing us and not offering so much as a smile. |
|
Rock purists accuse electronic music of a number of sins, but none so much as the sin of soullessness. |
|
At first glance the office resembles nothing so much as a college dormitory room. |
|
I think the real target oftentimes is not the underclass so much as it is college students. |
|
Hanging from an overhang by a bare knuckle with not so much as a carabiner, let alone a safety net to halt your fall, I hear you gasp. |
|
Thoughts and emotions are not communicated or portrayed so much as suggested, truncated and dispatched with inarticulate pseudo-sophistication. |
|
We allow it to consume us until it is not our place in the world that matters so much as how the outside world fits into what we think we have. |
|
If you so much as allude to angels, they'll smoke you out before anyone can say Ockham's razor! |
|
They take our licence fee, without so much as a by-your-leave, and then pump out scores of adverts glorying in their own ability. |
|
Sarah was just about to mount onto one when Fin without so much as a by-your-leave hoisted her up into the saddle and the tied her horse to his. |
|
The government of the United States will ask not so much as a by-your-leave. |
|
I tried to curse the selkie for pushing me into the portal without so much as a by-your-leave, but for some reason my voice wasn't working. |
|
I kept my chin up and held back any memories that would cause me to so much as get watery in the eyes. |
|
|
Even before they hit the ground both birds fan their hackles out, resembling nothing so much as a suddenly opened umbrella. |
|
I have stared down the barrel of a.44 caliber S and W without so much as a flinch, and here I was nervous. |
|
Some landlords are also evicting people without so much as an appearance in court, in violation of due process. |
|
Snape was sitting at the desk, but he disdained to even so much as lay a finger on the keypad. |
|
The stories don't recount this history so much as illuminate it from various angles, often obliquely. |
|
We were again left in silence, but I did not mind so much as I would have at any other time, as it gave me ample time to recollect myself. |
|
You may, possibly, seduce their wives, embezzle their money, and steal their parking space, without so much as a murmur of reproof. |
|
The book's success was so surprising to Stowe, she claimed that she did not write the book so much as take dictation from God. |
|
These are not candidates who represent ideas and programs so much as allegories representing human weaknesses and failings. |
|
Profits don't reflect greed so much as sound business practices efficiently satisfying market needs. |
|
It's not a programmed flight pattern so much as a road map that allows for diversions. |
|
Texas, by contrast, has year-round warmth and could swallow the aggregate population of Alaska without so much as a belch. |
|
Our supreme temptation today is not idol worship of graven images so much as settling for the good rather than striving for the best. |
|
Striding through the lobby with not so much as a glance at the other occupants, the man closed his umbrella and punched a button on the elevator. |
|
However, it reads like nothing so much as a visit to the bits and pieces of interview notes reposing in the author's research archives. |
|
They want nothing so much as to be protected from the lawless violence of his undisciplined war bands. |
|
Cerri and her angelic companion didn't so much as flinch as the leader stood to the side reveling a swordsman. |
|
The death metallers, of course, come across not so much as being in league with Odin, as they'd like to think, as being a group of bullies. |
|
She shut the front door without so much as a goodbye and I was left with a suitcase and a broken heart. |
|
They aren't manipulating us, so much as projecting their own anxiety on to the rest of society. |
|
|
His condition before the fight in New York did not indicate a man building up muscular mass so much as a boxer letting himself go. |
|
If I so much as took a breath too deeply for her liking, she would glare daggers at me. |
|
Shelley, who knew him almost as well as anyone, believed that Byron was never a revolutionary so much as a libertine. |
|
Many suggest that global warming will perturb the climate system so much as to even initiate an Ice Age. |
|
The authorities of the prelature must totally avoid even so much as giving advice on these matters. |
|
And if you so much as tell one single soul about this, you will live to regret it. |
|
I don't think she actually dislikes the new neighbors so much as she loathes the realtor who sold them their homes. |
|
They might not have been expecting a review so much as the more traditional coded message in the personals section of the Seattle Times. |
|
One suspects that it is not nature's limitation so much as it is the author's lack of imagination. |
|
They don't throw me even so much as the most cursory glance, before deciding that I'm too old for their club night. |
|
He initially doesn't have violence inside himself so much as ill will for the rubes he fleeces. |
|
Do not worry about fruitlet size so much as applying the thinning spray when weather conditions are good, as discussed above. |
|
She didn't even so much as shed a tear the day she'd run her bike into a brick wall when she was nine. |
|
He had never done so much as get a breath of fresh air in the past two weeks. |
|
Medieval witchcraft was not a rebellion against orthodoxy so much as a continuation of heathen impulses. |
|
The girls are not allowed to step out of the conclaves, even to buy so much as a bar of soap or a sachet of shampoo. |
|
To be fair, it's not age so much as the lung condition I suffered from a few years ago which has put a stop to my running. |
|
His hand was shaking so much as he unfolded the paper that it was hard to focus on the words written in Sam's familiar illegible scrawl. |
|
This was a delicious dish, not blackened so much as to give it a charred taste, but cooked to perfection. |
|
He didn't require miraculous surgery so much as mental fortitude and bottomless reserves of patience. |
|
|
According to him, what made modern science possible was not technical advances in instrumentation so much as a new way of looking at the world. |
|
In these efforts, and much more, our Congress has signed off on massive, tectonic legislation without so much as a moment's pause. |
|
That star is actually a teeny bit older than I am, but not so much as to make a difference. |
|
Without so much as a glance towards his assistant referee, the referee pointed to the penalty spot. |
|
However, this should not be regarded as a climbdown on the manager's part so much as a strategic withdrawal. |
|
And there was not so much as a glimpse of the post-punk landscape in sight. |
|
He's not a player in the rap game so much as a signpost, a scoreboard of rap's accomplishments thus far. |
|
And yet, in Wales, at least in this part of Wales, it's been like nothing so much as having been wired to the terminals of a dead battery. |
|
I don't see this as a conflict so much as a balancing act between two paradigms. |
|
I was accustomed to bearded iris that would rot if it so much as rained for three days straight. |
|
Significantly the role of marriage guidance counsellors is not to advise so much as to restore communication between couples. |
|
The policy reflected nothing so much as a shallowness of commitment among the member states. |
|
We Americans don't care how the cheese tastes so much as long as it gives us a good mouthfeel. |
|
But Cassidy just turns stomachs every time she so much as flumps into The Laundrette. |
|
Although Judo is a martial art it is not based on strength so much as an understanding of one's limits. |
|
His suffering is speckled with all the right detail, but the pain never feels authentic so much as scrupulously studied and perfectly replicated. |
|
I deliberately went and stood at the bar near by the group of girls on the other side of the pub, but they didn't even so much as look at me. |
|
She painlessly moves back and forth from fiddle to guitar, singing to whistling, without so much as a flinch. |
|
They walked with humped shoulders, lawn chairs in tow, without so much as a sound, save for the clinking of car-keys in ready. |
|
He looked down irritably at the mess, then defiantly at me, and walked on, passing a litter bin without so much as a glance. |
|
|
Not that I'm anti-capitalist, you understand, so much as just generally contrary. |
|
It is not the body of rules of international law, so much as the process of international law, which is really at issue. |
|
Had I known, I would have kicked and screamed and thrown my finest temper tantrum each time I so much as saw a swing-set. |
|
She also felt really flattered that he liked her so much as to forgive her for brushing him off and rejecting him. |
|
The system of punishment in supermax units resembles nothing so much as the system of punishment pioneered at Eastern State. |
|
He does precious little with the text, however, registering not so much as a flicker of emotional anguish. |
|
He was a big, beardy chap who looked like nothing so much as the leader of a doomsday cult. |
|
There wasn't so much as a geometry book in sight as the new timetable began with classes ranging from meditation and massage to yoga and tai chi. |
|
But if I had so much as a tingle of buyer's remorse it has faded in the face of several joyous afternoons of camera play. |
|
These are important, not to find fish so much as underwater islands and plateaux in deeper areas just off shore. |
|
No beetling precipice, of which she ever heard, had fallen and crushed so much as the sheep feeding in the valleys. |
|
Scotland is certainly over-peopled, but not so much as it was a century or half a century ago. |
|
They would jump a queue ahead of me without so much as a beg pardon or thank you. |
|
If plasma at that temperature so much as touched anything, it would go out like a light. |
|
No chains, no ropes, no shackles bound him, not even so much as a door blocked either of the two exits. |
|
You tell Danny that if he so much as lays a finger on you, I'll snap him in half like a twig. |
|
She had never so much as read about medieval knights, and now she had to fight like a champion. |
|
Without so much as a raised voice and despite hardly ever leaving her chair, Gina Clayton's skilled and confident presence fills the theatre. |
|
I'm not sure my point was about marshalling the judgment of history so much as resisting the indiscrimination of contemporaneity. |
|
He doesn't sit in his low-slung leather chair so much as melt into it, his body surrendering at once to a rare moment of physical comfort. |
|
|
Back in Wicklow, he says, he can happily doss away weeks and months with them without so much as a blink. |
|
Each one stood in a perfect square, without so much as a twitch of movement. |
|
The great philanthropist, in other words, is financed by mere mortals who stupidly bear their taxes without so much as a plaintive bleat. |
|
You've barely spoken a word all night, and haven't uttered so much as one mordacious comment. |
|
It is not that house prices have risen but that they have risen so much as to make accommodation unaffordable. |
|
It's not that it's been hot so much as the very high humidity that's made me feel darned uncomfortable. |
|
Word has it that a vanload of paper, needed for draw sheets and other such leaflets, passed into the course without undergoing so much as a cursory glance. |
|
If you so much as gently criticize him, they'll tear you apart. |
|
And then, without so much as a flicker, the light of the candle went out. |
|
Colbert motored through the entire shoot, never requiring so much as a second take or flubbing a line. |
|
This isn't specifically about America so much as it is about the use of available power and the opportunistic grabs to extend it wherever possible. |
|
Even his numerous tattoos did not suggest military service, manliness, or evil so much as his having been held down forcibly by sadistic friends and mutilated. |
|
It's now known that Hussein maintained a top-shelf selection of liquor and a six-figure wine cellar, even while denying so much as a sip to his soldiers. |
|
Meanwhile, there is not so much as a sentence, or even a clause, about the woebegone state of the episcopate, and its role in hampering the Church's mission. |
|
She was not thinking of her own situation so much as that of Kosovans. |
|
Without your so much as lifting a buffed pinky, those with dishonorable intentions are exposed by seemingly supernatural forces. |
|
Having since upgraded the alarm system to go off if so much as a fly touches our windows, I must try to remember that an alarm system that is not on is not an alarm system. |
|
News is delivered not so much as reportage as an opinion piece. |
|
The Virginia Department of Taxation has gone from examination of no records to collection of a naked assessment without so much as a by your leave. |
|
If, God forbid, we were ever not to be together, I respect him so much as the father of my children. |
|
|
I didn't notice the artiness so much as the fact that there seemed to be an awful lot of film of them just running along in a not-very-exciting way. |
|
One proof of that is in the Muslims who now come and go from the ground zero mosque without receiving so much as a glare. |
|
Despite this Lee cannot get so much as a look-in at the A-team squad. |
|
Before the cheers have so much as died away the anthem starts up again. |
|
And yet he was convinced that nothing had hampered him and his schoolfellows so much as the grammatical perfectionism drummed into them by teachers. |
|
I don't know why, but he'd slung a thick leather belt across each shoulder and resembled nothing so much as a young bandito marching home from a successful raid. |
|
We learned the difference between mastodons and mammoths and admired their sturdy columnar legs, but given our languor, we resembled nothing so much as the giant sloth. |
|
Imagine my surprise when he failed to succumb to my charms and rather politely put me in a cab and sent me home without so much as a matey punch on the arm. |
|
His indifference to the gossip has always struck me not as a decision so much as an involuntary and organic reaction. |
|
Petrified, she sat still, not so much as batting an eyelash. |
|
I did not see a paper, or hear so much as a susurrus of news during that whole time. |
|
Which is not exactly a refutation or a denial so much as a talking point aimed at giving political partisans something to say. |
|
The only problem was that it had not seen so much as a touch-up since it was built in the 1890s, and, to boot, had been abandoned for the past 20 years. |
|
Tutsi guerrilla fighters would not let me catch so much as a feral chicken in a countryside swarming with the livestock of their murdered fellow tribesmen. |
|
If Pyongyang so much as twitched a nuclear finger, its existence would be a thing of the past. |
|
But the bill says in black and white that if you share so much as a single tune with your pals on the Internet-as millions do every day-you are a felon. |
|
But little has perplexed me in recent years quite so much as the supposed miracle that is Soylent. |
|
It really let me skate through a large amount of the battles that I faced in the beginning of the game without even so much as a scratch at times. |
|
No gouges, slashes, holes, wounds, cuts, not so much as a scrape. |
|
One at a time, they or their families appear on screen in a stripped-down, minimal set that resembles nothing so much as an unfurnished prison cell. |
|
|
Nothing unnerves me so much as Jude Bailey's uncanny ability to deliver stories ranging from oil-barons-laying-waste-to-Alaska to kittens-up-trees without so much as blinking. |
|
From that perspective, the story is satirical not about Yeats so much as it is about Yeats-olatry. |
|
Within the blink of an eye, the sword hilt had been lowered upon the back of her head, and she crumpled neatly into a pile unconscious without so much as a snivel. |
|
He didn't talk so much as honk, and the merriment he evinced at his own jests produced a laugh that sounded like snot being hoovered up with a surgical tube. |
|
Hooligans are not reformed by Mozart, so much as driven away by a noise that is as alien and hostile to their world as whale song to a camel herd. |
|
For many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the return home is not a postscript to the war so much as another chapter. |
|
The sequester has arrived, without so much as a pro forma effort to avoid it. |
|
This is not about becoming spritely, so much as a little celestial. |
|
Okay, so the album's not a step forward so much as a squirm in quicksand. |
|
Today, Americans have adopted the Stars and Stripes not so much as a symbol of defiance against an aggressor but as an emblem for their grief and mourning for what happened. |
|
Not repairing roads and bridges so much as spying on its citizens and collecting their data. |
|
Ocado's style is so much the opposite of the hard sell that, bar a single Santa Coca-Cola advert, its site has still not sprouted so much as a sprig of holly. |
|
They aren't really character studies so much as character sketches. |
|
There is also peace where one element does not dominate so much as subjugates the rest of the society, and where any signs of dissension are nipped in the bud. |
|
This is not a place where the wise diner orders fajitas or the sopaipilla dessert, which resembles nothing so much as sugared snippets of frozen bread dough. |
|
But going out of his way to give me a lovely box of choccies, and then legging it without even waiting for so much as a thank-you, certainly isn't one of them. |
|
Without so much as a ' how do you do ' they launched straight into a tightly rehearsed 20-minute routine of their songs specially tailored for the show. |
|
Nothing sharpens the wits so much as a passion out of the common. |
|
Another year passes and not so much as a tent pole in the ground. |
|
It seems daft to me that anyone who so much as flirts with the idea of a career in education would fail to remember what they know about how teenagers behave. |
|
|
For the first time in my life, I feel like if anyone so much as breathes in the wrong direction toward me, I'm going to slice them to ribbons and floss with their intestines. |
|
He would have ridden into the fort with every hair in place, given a long flowery speech, and went off somewhere without so much as wrinkling his robes. |
|
And without so much as a French kiss, he is off to shatter Sarah's dreams. |
|
Customer relationship management and business analytics aren't replacing data warehousing so much as highlighting what a vital part of IT infrastructure it has become. |
|
Meanwhile the Malays and Chinese had managed to build impressive civilisations without so much as a past tense, let alone a subjunctive, or genitive plural. |
|
There, Gobber printed the text in plain red capital letters on a white backdrop, evoking nothing so much as a grocery window sign advertising the price of produce. |
|
It is vital to carry out a thorough investigation of the area before you so much as wet a line, and this is where the echo sounder comes in so handy. |
|
We have learned to see photographs, not so much as substantive objects, but as flat, dimensionless, even transparent windows that give view to other places and times. |
|
He did not conflate signs with reality at an elemental level, and his alphabet does not connect to reality so much as provide an analogy for real-world relations. |
|
The characters who populate Blake's prophetic books are not people so much as embodiments of the principles that shape the universe he believed he was reshaping with his art. |
|
Great care and attention should be devoted to epistolary correspondence, as nothing exhibits want of taste and judgment so much as a slovenly letter. |
|
It's not the accent so much as the malapropisms that set them apart. |
|
We instructed our men to shoot first and inquire afterward, if a shenzi so much as showed himself in the clearing. |
|
And I was standing in the hotel corridor without so much as a towel or keycard about my person. |
|
Help with onerous conditions is not help so much as benevolent coercion. |
|
Without so much as asking, he walked into the office and started digging through their files. |
|
Worse, Kutcher never even so much as apologized for the incident. |
|
Remember old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing so much as unfaith. |
|
That mean I don't get so much as another uckfay from you and the unexpected baloney pony? |
|
The Great Wilkie and Little Win were the biggest draw on the halls when you were not so much as a twinkle in your daddy's eye. |
|
|
If she chips so much as one of my porcelain piggies, I'll sue her six ways to Sunday! |
|
An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. |
|
And without so much as a departing retort, some face-saving insult, the duffel-coated rickle of banes slunk off. |
|
If you so much as look crossways at either of these women again I'll gutshoot you and leave you for the ants. |
|
I refused to make so much as a curtsey for the passing nobles, as I am a staunch egalitarian. |
|
Indeed, the structure of the Medici Bank resembles nothing so much as the modern holding company. |
|
That large body of the working men who were not counted as citizens and had not so much as a vote to serve as an anodyne to their stomachs. |
|
They had no buildings, of course, not so much as a reed hut, indeed, they feared the very idea of venturing under a roof. |
|
I tell veterans that if you're in the service and you get so much as a hangnail, get that in your service record. |
|
We look upon it not so much as a strangely overpraised, but as a mispraised composition. It is a torrent of abuse. |
|
A meatless day or a beerless or tealess day does not suggest moderation so much as immoderation. |
|
It would appear Mr Fry does not so much as pass wind without tweeting about it. |
|
Here McKay and Swift present Pearson not so much as Canada's Prince of Peace, but as a loyal and eager Cold Warrior. |
|
I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money. |
|
If you pick up a whiff that a neighbour plans so much as a cat-flap, bung in an objection. |
|
As important, Dean's book calls to mind nothing so much as the scurrilous treatment of Barry Goldwater back in the 1964 campaign. |
|
Though he could brachiate well, he could not so much as scratch an itch with his right hand. |
|
In other words, said Gerbrandt, the rise of the foreign box offices doesn't affect what films get made so much as what films won't get made. |
|
The first walk I took when I grew stronger and was able to get about was up to Aunt Jane's, notwithstanding she had never so much as been to ask after me all these days. |
|
It is not really a debate about privacy and personal safety versus politics, so much as an impulse towards pride and a rejection of internalized transphobia. |
|
|
This must be a place where miracles occur, as eccentric greaseballs make mistakes like this each week yet get back to operate without so much as a slap on the stethoscope. |
|
And it reminds of nothing so much as the epic blaxploitation movie soundtracks from the early '70s produced by the likes of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. |
|
Scott's love doesn't become star-crossed so much as it gets cross-wired. |
|
She renewed contact with the rabbi and other orthodox patients in the hospital, went to all the religious services, and loved nothing so much as lighting the Shabbas candles. |
|
It was not his matchless talent that exalted Koufax beyond his greatest contemporaries so much as it was his knowledge that character was not connected to talent. |
|
In this sense, education wasn't lost so much as it had yet to be acquired. |
|
But when I got home and checked the contents of the bag, I realised that I had been allowed to take a Swiss army penknife into the ground without so much as a murmur. |
|
He appears not so much as a revolt against societal standards as an embodiment of them, being generous, pious, and courteous, opposed to stingy, worldly, and churlish foes. |
|
In summer it can get quite busy, but not so much as Glenridding. |
|
Hence, it is not so much a body of doctrinal statements so much as the process of doctrinal development that is important in Anglican theological identity. |
|
He seems to commit his appalling crimes out of sheer spinelessness as much as greed, resorting quickly to drugging cups of tea as soon as his partner so much as questions him. |
|
These turn out not to be forces so much as the theorizations of forces of Frederick Jackson Turner, David Potter, Sven Steinmo, and Sacvan Bercovitch. |
|
Its theme is that Henry's wives are all brought without so much as a by-your-leave into the 21st century, to tell their stories in a room in which they have once lived. |
|
Due to this, it is possible that the early runes were not used so much as a simple writing system, but rather as magical signs to be used for charms. |
|
But poor fool, he did not know until that minute that there were one thousand and one reasons why a new building should not be assessed so much as an old one. |
|
If I had so much as a press stud out of place the fans would notice. |
|
The tendency of fiction to idealize and edulcorate reality throughout the centuries has enraged some writers so much as to push them to point their finger at such abuses. |
|