Example sentences of "[was/were] to the [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | That at least was the rationale behind the nepotism , though in practice Nicolae Ceauşescu 's brothers were as little use to him in the final analysis as Napoleon 's brothers were to the beleaguered emperor . |
| 2 | Consequently , a Filing Working Party was established and , alter extensive examination of the reference construction , it was found that the only changes considered viable ( ie that could be made without having to completely revise the titles of some 60,000 active files ) were to the first three fields of the reference structure , establishing the basis for a limited computerised search facility in the proposed index system , rather than the extensive facilities envisaged by the FAOR Team . |
| 3 | As Building News declared in 1875 : ‘ Railway termini and hotels are to the nineteenth century what monasteries and cathedrals were to the thirteenth century . |
| 4 | But there were undoubted benefits to both church and state in this set of policies , for they were to the mutual advantage of nationalism and catholicism as these were perceived by their respective institutional representatives , namely the politicians and the hierarchy . |
| 5 | The herring was to the Eastern European Jew what potatoes were to the Irish , which is surprising , for the herring is a salt-water fish and in Russia and Poland one rarely got a glimpse of the sea . |
| 6 | In the final quarter of an hour more than forty parties drew up in this same agitation ; and the closer they were to the final minute , the wilder their excitement to give in their cards . |
| 7 | As often as not , the injuries were to the right side of the body , as this was the side most usually exposed to the explosion . |
| 8 | Stations were to the British what the motte and bailey and great stone keeps were to the Normans . |
| 9 | The appeal was decided on the comparatively short point that although undue influence had been exercised by the husband upon the wife , it had not been shown that the transactions were to the manifest disadvantage of the wife , in which circumstances the court held that the wife could not be relieved from the effect of the charges on her home . |
| 10 | Erm , I think Yeltsin 's threat as it were to the Ukrainian is actually a diplomatic move , he wants Ukraine to remain within the Soviet Union , er and if it does so he 's not going to make an issue of the border , but , er , if it does break away completely I think what he 's saying is well there 's a frontier that we 're going to have to reconsider because large Eastern areas of Ukraine including huge industrial towns are predominantly populated by Russians . |
| 11 | They are to South African rugby what Cambridge University were to the English game in the mid-Seventies and , indeed , Llanelli were to Wales in the early Seventies . |
| 12 | His artistic debts were to the French Romantics and also Goya , Wiertz and Hogarth . |
| 13 | They were to the 1980s what F Scott Fitzgerald was to the roaring twenties . |
| 14 | It was to the former that he believed himself to be responding . |
| 15 | The Pill was to be for the sexual revolution what steam was to the industrial revolution . |
| 16 | But for some strange reason , and I do n't know whether they direct it to Christian the last shot of the film , almost unnoticeable because the credits were going up she went back into church and it was a communion service and all you saw was her receiving the bread and passing the plate and the plate was to the young black lad on the farm and you thought , he 's come back ! |
| 17 | They were to the 1980s what F Scott Fitzgerald was to the roaring twenties . |
| 18 | The herring was to the Eastern European Jew what potatoes were to the Irish , which is surprising , for the herring is a salt-water fish and in Russia and Poland one rarely got a glimpse of the sea . |
| 19 | What they would not accept was that vain and dreadful C.P. Snow , whose appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology was as insulting to the scientific community as it was to the Labour Party . |
| 20 | Napoleon III had no desire to emulate St Louis by sitting under an oak tree in Vincennes dispensing justice to all comers , but in a more up-to-date version he went one better by donating the entire area of the park ( which belonged to the Crown ) to the City of Paris so that it might become for the poorer section of the city what the Bois de Boulogne was to the rich . |
| 21 | Obviously , when sport offers itself as one of the few accessible routes away from deprivation , as it was to the early slaves , it takes on an attractive quality . |
| 22 | ‘ Hold on — ’ Her back was to the car-park entrance . |
| 23 | Such farmers were very conscious of the impediment that their lack of knowledge and skills was to the future development of the farm . |
| 24 | When she woke it was to the incessant chattering of the wheels against the rails and Emily thought she would never arrive at her destination . |
| 25 | The normal recourse of exiled Spanish knights was to the nearest Moorish court , but Rodrigo made instead for the Kingdom of Barcelona . |
| 26 | I was surprised to discover , now that I was going to leave it , just how attached I was to the undistinguished piecrust that was Reine , a place neither exciting nor dulling . |
| 27 | With supporters of human rights making waves in virtually every country of the world , perhaps it was appropriate that Mr Martin 's last foreign visit as secretary general was to the remote alpine kingdom of Bhutan where he discussed the plight of the Nepali-speaking people with King Jigme Wangchuck . |
| 28 | However , it was to the small farmer and small businessman , the very people who had failed to colonise the east , individuals who felt themselves beset by Poles , Jews and communists in ways they could not articulate , that the Nazis were to make their main appeal . |
| 29 | He knows all the villagers personally , and is as indispensable to me as he was to the previous twenty-seven Humanitarian Officers . |
| 30 | His original leanings were towards railway engineering and he maintained an interest in the subject all his life , but his first appointment in 1869 was to the Indian government telegraph department in Karachi , on whose behalf he visited Baluchistan , Mesopotamia , and Turkey , receiving special mention for his proficiency in the testing of land line and submarine cables . |