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vocabulary
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red tape
in a sentence

show 45 more with this conextual meaning
  • A loyaltystatement required of everyone, it was hoped, might save some time and a lot of red tape.†   (source)
  • But I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out that front door, with all the traditional red tape and complications.†   (source)
  • Deal with red tape.†   (source)
  • His oversized mahogany desk was covered with neat piles of folders whose edges were bordered with red tape and whose covers bore various code words.†   (source)
  • Ai= ter the service, he told me, "We've got a lot of targets, but all the military red tape and smoke prevents us from touching them."†   (source)
  • I'm trying to get them out of there but the red tape is so fierce.†   (source)
  • It had taken an act from the U.S. State Department to bypass and countermand the red tape that would have normally resulted in an immigrant's immediate expulsion.†   (source)
  • I thought we might be able to cut through all the red tape in this case.†   (source)
  • In the faraway Soviet city of Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald has finally cleared the tangle of red tape that has prevented him from returning home.†   (source)
  • "Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the John Galt Line," she said.†   (source)
  • Authority red tape, quarantine perhaps; I was too young to know.†   (source)
  • While Tyler had been up to his neck in red tape and carbon fiber, which he was starting to quietly loathe, the world had been dealing with a plague.†   (source)
  • Red tape like a pit of snakes!†   (source)
  • Red tape.†   (source)
  • He does not have files, memoranda, notes, and reels of red tape.†   (source)
  • The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape!†   (source)
  • I can't remember ever in my life seeing red tape.†   (source)
  • And with all those damn formalities that we have to go through-you know how it is, red tape!†   (source)
  • And in normal circumstances everything would be dismissed as muddled red tape.†   (source)
  • Even though we won in the district court, there's still a ton of red tape to get through.†   (source)
  • I was a corporal when Jelly said I was a corporal; the rest was red tape.†   (source)
  • An army that is mostly organization, red tape, and overhead, most of whose "soldiers" never fight.†   (source)
  • In 1984, there were 500 "red tape" areas on the system — places where track damage had made it unsafe for trains to go more than 15 miles per hour.†   (source)
  • I understand that these days adopting a child involves red tape; in those days it was as simple as adopting a kitten.†   (source)
  • It's only a new form of legal red tape.†   (source)
  • You know how it is nowadays, with the inefficiency of all office help and with the amount of red tape we're tangled in, some bungling fool mixed the records and processed the attachment order against you-when it wasn't your case at all, it was, in fact, the case of a soap manufacturer!†   (source)
  • They came on parties and vacations, on little shopping trips for trinkets and photographs and the "atmosphere"; they came to study and apply sociological laws; they came with stars and badges and rules and regulations, bringing some of the red tape that had rawled across Earth like an alien weed, and letting it grow on Mars wherever it could take root.†   (source)
  • There's red tape connected with collecting insurance.†   (source)
  • A large packet of letters, eight tattered, black-bound account books tied together with faded red tape, a photograph, about five by eight inches, mounted on cardboard and stained in its lower half by water, and a plain gold ring, man-sized, with some engraving in it, on a loop of string.†   (source)
  • A man has relatives in the old country but he can't get them over here on account of a lot of red tape.†   (source)
  • I don't want any French red tape just because I discovered the man.†   (source)
  • They were all marked and docketed, and tied with red tape.†   (source)
  • Papers in packets tied with red tape were pigeon-holed around, and some iron safes filled a recess, while the bare wood floor was, like the door-step, stained by previous visitors.†   (source)
  • Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers.†   (source)
  • I know that for the last five days he has had three thousand drawn out of the bank, changed into notes of a hundred roubles, packed into a large envelope, sealed with five seals, and tied across with red tape.†   (source)
  • Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking at me.†   (source)
  • …of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment; in paper—foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whiteybrown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, Indiarubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands—glass and leaden—pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever…†   (source)
  • The complication was of this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification that every rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career, was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his economy.†   (source)
  • There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light.†   (source)
  • Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a standish before him.†   (source)
  • But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.†   (source)
  • It formed a part of this same short document; and he derived from it the remarkable fact that the sheets of foolscap paper it had devoted to the public service would pave the footways on both sides of Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Immense cheering and laughter); while of tape—red tape—it had used enough to stretch, in graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to the General Post Office.†   (source)
  • The old gentleman's eyes were wandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as he sate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape.†   (source)
  • Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.†   (source)
  • Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally.†   (source)
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