Example sentences of "was [not/n't] [adv] [adv] a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ It was not as much a question of whether we would take a new step in our computerisation , but if we would subcontract it out , ’ said Olivier and Xavier Decelle , Picard 's president and managing director , respectively , in an article in Les Echos . |
| 2 | So although I sat tight as the communicants went forward I was not too conspicuously a Protestant . |
| 3 | Coalitionism was not then only a political creed , but also a web of friendships and habits that underpinned political cooperation . |
| 4 | This rewriting of history was not so much a matter of starting again , but of making use , for a new purpose , of knowledge which was already available , whether in the work of philosophers like Hegel , economists like Ricardo , biologists like Darwin , or anthropologists . |
| 5 | It was not so much a new view as an old view applied to new problems . |
| 6 | Turning the Map : Images from the Americas part one , Christopher Columbus reached America 500 years ago and amid the celebrations of his achievement this two-part exhibition by photographers from all over that continent reminds us that America is not just one country and Columbus ' arrival was not so much a discovery , but more the beginning of colonisation by Europeans ( until 21 Feb ) . |
| 7 | In retrospect the decline of the tram in Britain was not so much a response to technological change but more a decision to cut capital investment in public transport . |
| 8 | This was not so much a service as a lot of clowning about to biblical themes . |
| 9 | The noted Maori boys college was not so much a rugby school as a school of rugby , fielding 13 rugby teams , one football side and one hockey team from its 350 pupils , as well as producing the best school XV in the country . |
| 10 | Like John after him , he was not so much a tinker as a brazier , a mender and purveyor of household utensils , with a forge beside his cottage . |
| 11 | In the sense of their access to political power it was not so much a case that women were ‘ returned ’ to the family since they had never really left it to go out to get power — rather they had traditionally exercised power , if at all , by virtue of their familial positions and as the public and private spheres were separated , women were left behind . |
| 12 | By the end of The Order of Things , however , he revises this somewhat conventional thesis to suggest that what was involved was not so much a move from a static to a historical view of things as the break-up of a common , unified historical time-scheme in which every phenomenon had had its place in the same space and chronology . |
| 13 | With 13,000 acres of rolling Northamptonshire farmland , more than 100 tied cottages , a valuable collection of paintings , several by Sir Joshua Reynolds , rare books , and seventeenth-century porcelain , furniture and silver , including the Marlborough collection , Althorp was not so much a stately home , more a way of life . |
| 14 | And when we begin to gain , if only the merest glimpse of the deeply ingrained brutalities and prejudices embodied in what was judged to be ‘ right ’ , then we can see more clearly that the Garotter 's Act was not so much a moment of panic which led respectable England off its true course , but a mature expression of the existing social relations — including the self-assumption of the mighty , and their attitudes and actions towards the lower orders and the plebs . |
| 15 | Clara could not explain to the school that it was not so much a question of finance , as of her mother 's instinctive opposition to any pleasurable project — and anyone could see that a visit to Paris could not possibly fail to entail more pleasure than instruction . |
| 16 | And what was tending to happen here , as the Scottish Typographical Circular regularly reported , was not so much a division of labour between women on straight setting and men on other processes , but rather the diversion of certain kinds of typesetting from the linesmen ( male piece-workers ) to the women , who were not only paid much less but who were also considered by some employers to be actually better at it . |
| 17 | Helsinki was intended to be a step towards further conversations and , like Yalta , its recognition of European borders was not so much a ‘ betrayal ’ of those under Soviet domination as a recognition of hard facts . |
| 18 | Though Masonry was always to be an element in the liberal forces — particularly in later non-socialist brands of Republicanism — it was never again , as it was from 1815 to 1820 , its chief framework ; even then it was not so much a system of belief as the only clandestine organization available for conspiracy . |
| 19 | He had not worked out tactics to deal with what was not so much a surrender as a bid to form an immediate alliance . |
| 20 | It was not so much a guidance note as a review ; the Committee 's terms of reference had been to consider the design and layout most appropriate to various types of roads in built-up areas , with due regard to safety , the free Mow of road traffic , economy and the requirements of town planning , and to make recommendations . |
| 21 | It was not so much a feeling of disquiet as of expectation , almost pleasurable anticipation . |
| 22 | Thinking of Giles Carnaby , of course , was not so much a considered process as an involuntary twitch . |
| 23 | It was not so much a letter , as an ultimatum . |
| 24 | It was not so much a case of social science theories being senseless , misguided or absurd , but more to do with their serious lack of evidential support . |
| 25 | To many Churchill was not so much a buccaneer as a straightforward pirate , a political outcast who skated on thin ice deliberately to keep himself in the public eye , a man who polished brilliant and wounding phrases that tacitly suggested himself as the alternative should his jeremiads turn out true . |
| 26 | The point should not be overemphasized , since on occasion this sense of duty was not so much a cause of action but a post hoc justification of it . |
| 27 | Liam Brady 's choice of more or less the side who lost to Falkirk in the Scottish Cup the previous weekend — Rudi Vata was replaced by Brian O'Neil — was not so much a vote of confidence as a challenge to those players to prove they could not be so bad again . |
| 28 | It was not so much a case of Glasgow getting worse as one of the rest of the country improving faster . |
| 29 | This was not so much an escape as a therapy . |
| 30 | Here was an admission that it was not so much an issue of transforming alien black cultures , but a problem of cultures and practices of white racism leading to unequal opportunities . |