Example sentences of "[noun sg] [was/were] [prep] [adv] a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The march might be a girdle of lawless palatines , only elusively within reach of the King 's justice , but the shadow of royal displeasure was at least a curb there ; but Gwynedd , though it formerly owned Henry as suzerain , was a free principality , and could harbour runaways and make short work of captured felons with impunity . |
| 2 | Treleaven was until recently a pipe fitter . |
| 3 | The intense barrage fire of our artillery sweeping the whole slope of the hill was at once a magnificent and awe-inspiring sight ; the Mort Homme flamed like a volcano , and the air and the earth alike trembled at the shock of thousands of bursting shells . |
| 4 | In this case he clearly decided that the sampo was at once a thing and an allegory , like the Silmarils : a jewel , bright , hypnotic , intrinsically valuable , but also the quintessence of the creative powers , provoking both good and evil , the maker 's personality itself . |
| 5 | Once he had got the idea of killing her ( and at first this fantasy did not seem very different from the reveries in which he wept by her open grave , comforted by young , fashionably dressed women ) it took some time to appreciate that this scenario was of quite a different type from the others . |
| 6 | Their philosophical idealism was at once a retreat from the material world of unruly mobs and declining privilege and a programme for maintaining their position while accommodating some change : ‘ Socratic political thought was an intellectually sophisticated and ingenious justification for counter-revolution in democracy and the maintenance of the status quo in oligarchy ’ ( ibid. p. 4 ) . |
| 7 | Born , apparently , in 1890 in Nghe An province of central Vietnam , Ho 's father was at least an acquaintance if not friend of the veteran nationalist Phan Boi Chau . |
| 8 | Terry Castle suggests that for these poets the mirror was at once an emblem of the psyche and the symbol of an alternative world : ‘ … the mirror image both distilled a longing for purity and expressed a desire for escape … ’ |
| 9 | The racing was of quite a high standard . |
| 10 | Parthia was by now a remote state , though formidable : the Magi had some of the prestige of the mysterious region from which they came and offered spiritual goods of their own . |
| 11 | The plaintiff had to prove that the breach of duty was at least a material contributory cause of the harm . |
| 12 | Windmills , which had begun to come into existence during the 16th century were by now a common sight throughout the Lothians . |
| 13 | The new Commonwealth was at least a genuinely voluntary union , and yet it was far from clear that it provided the answer to nationality differences that had for so long eluded the Gorbachev leadership . |
| 14 | His father 's family was by now a familiar part of his life , but he felt no particular attachment to any of them . |