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provisional
in a sentence

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  • The ending of the story is therefore made even more provisional and uncertain by the quote from Isaiah.†   (source)
  • As soon as something like a provisional programme had been hastily cobbled together important announcements would come in, either from the front or of a diplomatic nature.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza, for his part, had received provisional appointment as First Assistant at the telegraph office, and Lotario Thugut wanted him to head the office when he left to direct the School of Telegraphy and Magnetism, which he expected to do the following year.†   (source)
  • I'm not sure if it was for Tommy's benefit, or for any onlookers', but I'd kept my posture looking very provisional, and at one point made a move to carry on with my stroll.†   (source)
  • Second, we have arranged for a provisional government.†   (source)
  • The pavement turned to dirt, then roads turned into paths, and the houses grew more and more provisional.†   (source)
  • This was the Great Place, Mqhekezweni, the provisional capital of Thembuland, the royal residence of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, acting regent of the Thembu people.†   (source)
  • In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste.†   (source)
  • He believed it provisionally here in this room located below street level in a frame house on a weekday afternoon in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.†   (source)
  • Jean de Satigny settled his wife provisionally in a hotel and turned his attention to the task of finding them lodgings worthy of his new status.†   (source)
  • She's been worried about him not having a church up here and has worked up a provisional plan, which she now springs.†   (source)
  • A bill for a "provisional army" was passed, but not before it was cut from 25,000 men to 10,000, which was still more than Adams had asked for or wanted.†   (source)
  • I, Franklin Hata, retired supplier of home medical goods, expatriate and war veteran and now suburban lap swimmer nonpareil, can operate only provisionally at present, even in the wane of my life.†   (source)
  • He is said to be linked with the Japanese Red Army, the Organization for the Armed Arab Struggle, the West German Baader-Meinhof gang, the Quebec Liberation Front, the Turkish Popular Liberation Front, separatists in France and Spain, and the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army.†   (source)
  • After we decided that Mike should talk voice-to-voice to any comrade under some circumstances, it was necessary to give him more voices and dress him up, make him three dimensions, create "Adam Selene, Chairman of the Provisional Committee of Free Luna."†   (source)
  • So it was that I found myself in the mid-nineteen seventies in another small house, this time in Co. Wicklow south of Dublin, with a young family of my own and a slightly less imposing radio set, listening to the rain in the trees and to the news of bombings closer to home-not only those by the Provisional IRA in Belfast but equally atrocious assaults in Dublin by loyalist paramilitaries from the north.†   (source)
  • I'm going to try to form a provisional company.†   (source)
  • Finally the room was left—after these last twenty minutes of delirious activity—in what might be termed provisional silence, amid the depths of which I could hear only the soft heartsick adagio scratching on the phonograph, and the woman's broken sobs on the bed above me.†   (source)
  • The republic refused to recognize the Provisional Government and split off from the rest of Russia.†   (source)
  • But our life in this village feels provisional.†   (source)
  • We did not go back to the ghetto that evening; we were provisionally billeted in Narbutt Street.†   (source)
  • He created them provisional lieutenants of infantry.†   (source)
  • In July a unit loyal to the Provisional Government entered the town.†   (source)
  • Even years after receiving the awards, as he lobbied Harvard to grant provisional admission to his son Daniel, whose own performance on the entry exams was far from stellar, Burnham wrote, "He needs to know that he is a winner, and, as soon as he does, he will show his real quality, as I have been able to do.†   (source)
  • At this point the numbers which had meant provisional permission to live were given permanent status, and at the same time I was moved to new quarters in the ghetto, in Kurza Street.†   (source)
  • In residential areas especially, sheets of corrugated roofing metal had been placed on end to make provisional-looking barriers, all high enough to block direct gunfire, which I imagined was their purpose.†   (source)
  • He still isn't telling, and I am reassured: despite his changed facade, his thinning hair and provisional suit, he is still the same person underneath.†   (source)
  • Also, on July 2, to the surprise of many, Adams nominated George Washington as commander-in-chief of the new provisional army.†   (source)
  • "Hey, Doc," Liv calls out, in an airy voice provisional and solicitous, "I finally remembered something I meant to ask you about."†   (source)
  • All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was thrown backward and away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.†   (source)
  • Holding on to my hand, she watched the coffin being lowered into the earth in the provisional spot we had obtained.†   (source)
  • "In the midst of the resulting chaos, turmoil, and disorder," Yutar proclaimed, "it was planned by the accused to set up a Provisional Revolutionary Government to take over the administration and control of the country."†   (source)
  • He answered, "Isn't it true, Colonel, that your provisional government has asked for membership in Federated Nations?†   (source)
  • Chief Buthelezi agreed to provisionally register for the elections in exchange for a promise to subject our differences over constitutional issues to international mediation.†   (source)
  • I am pleased enough, too, that Sunny and I have so far remained on decent and civil terms, no matter if they are ones eternally provisional.†   (source)
  • By dinnertime Luna had a government to replace co-opted provisional government—i. e., dummy government we had opted ourselves, which sent Prof and me to Earth.†   (source)
  • And then my having the companion feeling, too, that my life had all at once become provisional again, the way a young man's might be, open to possibility and choice and then vulnerability as well, a state of being I have always treated with veritable dread.†   (source)
  • Our "provisional president" was a computer, and "cabinet" was Wyoh, Finn, Comrade Clayton, and Terence Sheehan, editor of Pravda, plus Wolfgang Korsakov, board chairman of LuNoHoCo and a director of Bank of Hong Kong in Luna.†   (source)
  • Congress confirmed all acts of provisional government, thus putting face on what we had done, thanked outgoing government for services and instructed Wolfgang's committee to continue work on permanent government structure.†   (source)
  • With decorations trimmed away was assertion that Luna was de-facto a sovereign state, with an unopposed government in being, a civil condition of peace and order, a provisional president and cabinet carrying on necessary functions but anxious to return to private life as soon as Congress completed writing a constitution—and that we were here to ask that these facts be recognized de-jure and that Luna be allowed to take her rightful place in councils of mankind as a member of Federated…†   (source)
  • While he had not planned it, on this day he accepted the first enlistments in what came to be known as Bragg's Troop, although in orders he called it the Fort Repose Provisional Company.†   (source)
  • There is a regular battle between the cadets who support the Provisional Government and the garrison soldiers who support the Bolsheviks.†   (source)
  • Those political forces that are still faithful to the Provisional Government and the disbanded Constituent Assembly are concentrating in the Maritime Province on the Pacific coast.†   (source)
  • For some time the region had been under the Siberian Provisional Government, but now it had fallen to Admiral Kolchak, who had given himself the title of "Supreme Ruler."†   (source)
  • By the way, Jarvis, we arranged the funeral provisionally for tomorrow afternoon, after a service in the Parkwold Church.†   (source)
  • So they gave us provisional visas.†   (source)
  • The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was none the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence.†   (source)
  • This note is made provisionally, in order to explain in part why it is now so difficult to give any clear description of her.†   (source)
  • Or was I a foolish, uncorrected, blundering, provisional, unreliable man, this was taken away as of no account and couldn't have any sense or meaning.†   (source)
  • Provisionally at least, your guilt is seen as proven.†   (source)
  • Villon would no longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging.†   (source)
  • A provisional resource suggested itself.†   (source)
  • It comes from the Provisional Government.†   (source)
  • The springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man to have patience.†   (source)
  • —You wish me to say, Stephen answered, that the rights of property are provisional, and that in certain circumstances it is not unlawful to rob.†   (source)
  • To his wife he no longer counted: he had become extinct when he ceased to fulfil his purpose, and she sat at his side with the provisional air of a traveller who waits for a belated train to start.†   (source)
  • But meanwhile he had to go on living, and, until he formed a theory of conduct, he made himself a provisional rule.†   (source)
  • Custom! that skilful but unhurrying manager who begins by torturing the mind for weeks on end with her provisional arrangements; whom the mind, for all that, is fortunate in discovering, for without the help of custom it would never contrive, by its own efforts, to make any room seem habitable.†   (source)
  • His adversary, Naphta responded, showed no lack of the same contradictions and consistencies; he thought of himself as a democrat, and yet expressed himself as something less than a friend of the common man and equality, indeed displayed a reprehensible aristocratic arrogance by describing the world's proletariat, who were called to provisional dictatorship, as a mob.†   (source)
  • He would accept any employment which might be offered him on the strength of his late employer's recommendation; but he would accept it as a provisional thing only.†   (source)
  • And so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious.†   (source)
  • The house loomed obscure and uninhabited; only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy.†   (source)
  • All such provisional arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent.†   (source)
  • …pretty, if rather dispassionate talent for mathematics helped him move ahead; and after receiving his report card in his freshman year, he concluded he would finish school—primarily, truth to tell, because that allowed him to extend a familiar, provisional, indecisive state of affairs and to win time for reflection as to what Hans Castorp would most like to do, because he was not even close to deciding that, not even as a senior, and when it finally was decided (to say he decided would…†   (source)
  • It was bitter enough for Lily to ask a favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still; and one morning she presented herself at Mrs. Peniston's, where Grace, for the facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode.†   (source)
  • Her place as monitor in the school was taken by another young woman within a few days of her vacating it, which substitution also passed without remark, Sue's services having been of a provisional nature only.†   (source)
  • And so, hardly had the delicious sensation, which Swann had experienced, died away, before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true, and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable.†   (source)
  • To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find some means of earning her living.†   (source)
  • Jude lifted the boy to a level with himself, keenly regarded him with gloomy tenderness, and telling him he would have been met if they had known of his coming so soon, set him provisionally in a chair whilst he went to look for Sue, whose supersensitiveness was disturbed, as he knew.†   (source)
  • D'Artagnan did reflect, and resolved to thrash Planchet provisionally; which he did with the conscientiousness that d'Artagnan carried into everything.†   (source)
  • I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal.†   (source)
  • Some were beginning to look as if they did not know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how they were going to get home again; and provisionally sat on with a dazed smile.†   (source)
  • I happen to be going in the direction of the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the prefecture.†   (source)
  • As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.†   (source)
  • She would deceive you, under any circumstances, as little as might be; but she had a trick of answering in this provisional form.†   (source)
  • At a provisional estimate, the alterations that the Medical Officer asserts to be desirable will cost somewhere about twenty thousand pounds.†   (source)
  • "But if Mr. Stelling catches you carrying it in?" said Mr. Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this new doubt.†   (source)
  • I inquired, provisionally.†   (source)
  • He for his part had tossed away all cheap inventions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease: he was enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and…†   (source)
  • Prudence, monsieur, is a virtue sufficiently useless to Musketeers, I know, but indispensable to churchmen; and as I am only a Musketeer provisionally, I hold it good to be prudent.†   (source)
  • There was an under-handsomeness in it, struggling to reveal itself through the provisional curves of immaturity, and the casual disfigurements that resulted from the straitened circumstances of their lives.†   (source)
  • However, his progress was made unexpectedly easy by his discovering alone in the kitchen an elderly woman who seemed to be acting as provisional housekeeper during the convulsions from which Farfrae's establishment was just then suffering.†   (source)
  • If I were in his place, I'd be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I'd lead the human race in a straightforward way, I'd weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory.†   (source)
  • But this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleon's, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown, on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had acquired a certain definiteness which contrasted with its provisional aspect.†   (source)
  • But meanwhile it may be of interest to set forth a few provisional ideas.†   (source)
  • Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's daughter?†   (source)
  • In addition, Thornton added a provisional class of "words and phrases of which I have found earlier examples in American than in English writers; …. with the /caveat/ that further research may reverse the claim"—a class offering specimens in /alarmist/, /capitalize/, /eruptiveness/, /horse of another colour/ (/sic!†   (source)
  • A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: to obtain a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan (agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 5 Dame Street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E. C.): to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case of Hellenic female divinities: to obtain admission (gratuitous or paid) to the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandmann Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street.†   (source)
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