(1) In The Girl, the relationship moves from Pygmalion to Beauty and the Beast, before curdling into something more mutually destructive, if not downright abusive.
(2) Unfortunately, this explosion is mild compared with the number of myths, falsehoods and downright lies which have accompanied these ideas.
(3) It was ambitious, experimental and sometimes downright odd – but seductively, compulsively readable too.
(4) Patterson agrees that it’s all much more controlled now, but she also wonders whether at times the media can be too negative, doomy, and sometimes downright nasty.
(5) Indeed, such parochialism would be downright frowned upon by today's World Cup mentality, considering that both the official anthem and slogan this time round is the typically Fifa-ishly nonsensical, and distinctly Benetton-esque, "We Are One".
(6) And it means that if Labour were to win, Mr Brown would be very foolish, indeed downright wrong, to move Mr Darling.
(7) In excerpts of these videos I am shown making a series of glib, thoughtless and sometimes downright insulting comments”, Gruber told the committee.
(8) Because supply chains are so long and processors use subcontractors to supply meat when the volume of orders changes dramatically at short notice, it is all too easy for mislabelled, poorer quality, or downright fraudulent meat to be substituted for what is specified in big abattoirs and processing plants.
(9) They can look downright ladylike, even sexy, and this has caused the high street to go shorts-crazy.
(10) 8.24pm BST "The mood is downright miserable" – defense department education activity employee The Guardian's Ruth Spencer ( @ruths ) is in touch with federal workers affected by the shutdown.
(11) We do not claim an inch of land that does not belong to us, but we won’t give up any patch that is ours,” the newspaper said , adding: “China, of course, will not accept such downright political provocations.” The China Daily, Beijing’s English-language mouthpiece, claimed the “outrageously one-sided ruling” meant military confrontation in the region had become more likely.
(12) Though against Tampa Bay in the ALDS he was downright awful.
(13) In other words, it's hilarious to watch when sober, it's downright mindblowing if you're anything but.
(14) Of course the polarisation of old and young rests on a fallacy, if not a downright lie: that all young people possess perfect skin and gleaming hair, have non-stop sex, are bursting with energy and are never lonely.
(15) Evidence reveals, however, that our planet is an almost unimaginably complicated beast, which reacts to a dramatically changing climate in all manner of different ways; a few – like the aforementioned – straightforward and predictable; some surprising and others downright implausible.
(16) These can range from the well-established to the downright eccentric.
(17) Despite Downing Street's dismissal of the former president's claim, the conjunction is likely to feed the perceptions of some in China that western concern about human rights is at best selective and at worst downright hypocritical.
(18) Many millions of words have been spilt on the subject of the perfect cup of coffee, the vast proportion confusing or downright contradictory.
(19) 10.50pm BST 90+1 min: It's a measure of how downright German the Germans are that Manuel Neuer and his defenders were absolutely furious with each other for allowing Brazil to score that late goal.
(20) Whitehall eventually intervened, with a government inspector ruling: "Any system of control must make some small place for the dynamic, the unexpected, the downright quirky."
(Superl.) Only this, and nothing else; such, and no more; simple; bare; as, a mere boy; a mere form.
Example Sentences:
(1) Interphase death thus involves a discrete, abrupt transition from the normal state and is not merely the consequence of progressive and degenerative changes.
(2) By way of major complications, merely one perforation occurred.
(3) Indeed, the nationalist and religious right bloc merely held steady , gaining just one seat.
(4) A brief review of the last decade or so of developments in health politics, policy and law suggests that health is no longer a field of mere "dynamics without change."
(5) The view that testes found lateral to the external ring and which could be pushed some way into the scrotum were merely retractile was questioned.
(6) In these three patients, laxity of the knee in flexion was so severe that posterior instability could not be corrected merely by patellar relocation.
(7) It has so far returned a mere $6m (£3.6m) of its relatively meagre $28m (£17.1m) budget, according to Forbes, a percentage of just 21%.
(8) In the literature this disease is presented merely as a metastasis.
(9) The plasmid-encoded activity does not merely replace the RecBCD enzyme failure but differs in several significant ways.
(10) Furthermore, changes between merely perceived identical parts can result in apparent depth.
(11) Thus, the long stalks of Sk1 or phosphate-starved caulobacters are not merely a function of their longer doubling times.
(12) Exogenous macromolecular DNA was able to repair, to an important degree the radiotoxic effect of 3H-thymidine on V79 cells by a mechanism other than the mere reduction of specific activity of 3H-thymidine.
(13) Multiple contacts between the gamma-subunit and calmodulin (delta-subunit), as indicated by our data, may help to explain why strongly denaturing conditions are required to dissociate these two subunits, whereas complexes of calmodulin with most other target enzymes can be readily dissociated by merely lowering Ca2+ to submicromolar concentrations.
(14) Scott insisted he was an abstract painter in the way he felt Chardin was too: the pans and fruit were uninteresting in themselves; they were merely "the means of making a picture", which was a study in space, form and colour.
(15) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
(16) These outcomes further supported the conclusion that the contextual stimuli exerted true conditional control over conditional relations in the equivalence classes and were not merely elements of compound stimuli.
(17) A mere glance at the time courses shows what reaction schemes are inapplicable.
(18) Since the discovery of the antidepressant effects of interventions in the sleep-wake cycle, a number of hypotheses have emerged according to which disturbances in sleep physiology are not merely expressions but essential components of the pathophysiology of depression.
(19) In a Facebook post , the songwriter and activist claims that Swift has merely chosen sides in the battle between Google and Spotify, saying that the singer was trying to “sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers”.
(20) It is assumed that one function of grooming behaviour may be a merely cleansing one.