Regulators have the ability to lay down the law and make the deal much more consumer-friendly in any number of ways, demanding (for instance) that the new company make HBO shows available more readily via apps or streaming, meaning that we wouldn't be forced to sign up for costly packages.
He is a contemporary of Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford, was a friend of Raymond Carver, and shares their devastating concern for detail and domestic complexity, the ability to lay bare the convolutions, eccentricities, dangers and beauties of "ordinary" people.
The Chinese forces lacked the ability to lay siege to the city, so the evacuation order caught Peng by surprise.
In contrast to his ability to lay bare the psychology of racism, Naipaul's depiction of a homosexual is clumsy.
His ability to lay on the charm has come to his rescue more than once.
The classic trick of herpes viruses is their ability to lay dormant in the body, undetected by the immune system, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to cause a new outbreak of cold sores, shingles, or mononucleosis.
He has an ability to lay claim to the audience's trust without quite reciprocating it, to seem at once guileless and guarded.
G.M. management was wary of placing limits on its ability to lay off workers, the automaker's traditional response to recessions.
A few Americans have experimented with such Mendelian crossbreeding before, most notably Richard Powers in novels like "Gain," but Powers has an uncanny ability to lay waste to the familiar with bombshells of fictional invention.
