Example sentences of "[prep] [conj] [pers pn] be [noun] [noun pl] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | He spent the black hours best in the writing of hopelessly happy propositions to her that he kept for comfort in a drawer , as if they were love letters received from her instead of dead ones from himself that he saw no good in posting . |
| 2 | Lamps of every size sprouted in pairs where no one had seen the need for lamps before , until there were as many as four pairs on the front of a Cadillac , and there were models which carried fourteen lamps as if they were Mississippi riverboats . |
| 3 | His tone of voice objective , dispassionate , as if they were kitchen implements or gardening devices . |
| 4 | Two Creole girls squeezed oranges in the bows while Baccy shouted at his crew as if they were galley slaves rather than a bunch of half-drunk amateurs trying to have Sunday fun . |
| 5 | Advertising lessons at school as if they were TV programmes |
| 6 | He refers to his triptychs as being , ‘ three chapters in one novel ’ , but in his recent works the stories are all thrown together , juxtaposing , he says , ‘ as if they were stage sets ’ , liberating Pakenham 's palette . |
| 7 | She used to show you a collection of photographs which she kept in her wallet as if they were family photographs , but in fact these pictures were all pictures of men 's cocks , she used to make them stop on the way home at the photobooth in the entrance to the station , she 'd make them stand on the stool with their trousers down , she never got caught — Greta , on seeing me leave with an especially handsome man : ‘ I hope you 're on the pill . ’ |
| 8 | Margaret pored over the sheet as if they were wedding photographs . |
| 9 | Haggett got in there with his bayonet , and speared the two as if they were straw figures . |
| 10 | When national stations broadcast chiefly in the shortwaves the range of different newscasts available is immediately wider ; when people have every expectation that all broadcasts will tell some lies , they use different broadcasts as if they were radio beacons for navigators of truth : knowing the position of each , they can calculate the co-ordinates of reality with an acceptable degree of certainty . |
| 11 | Down the pit , on the rugby football field , in the pub , telling stories , singing anthems as if they were war songs , and finding poetry — Dylan Thomas , Gwyn Thomas , R. S. Thomas — in the country of the Red Dragon . |
| 12 | He led them into the kitchen , chatting to Blanche and Dexter as if they were house guests rather than police officers who had come to interview him about a murder . |
| 13 | To my mind it is as much of a prostitution of literary talent as Hemingway committed by his glorification of bullfighting , to read the likes of Allan Massie , lending his elegant prose to the description of pugilists , praising boxing as an art-form as if they were opera singers engaged in an aria celebrating physical courage in a coloratura of fists . |
| 14 | And certainly Broughton and one or two of the older boarders regularly drew a cheap safety razor over the blonde fuzz on their cheeks , and anxiously inspected the shavings as if they were virility tokens . |
| 15 | He simply could not go around labelling people , and moving them about as if they were chess pieces , just to suit his own ends . |
| 16 | The distance they are prepared and able to travel will depend , of course , upon whether they are car owners or , if not , on public transport facilities . |
| 17 | As for whether it was hunt saboteurs or home-going Christmas drunks , the station will make all possible enquiries . |