Example sentences of "they [was/were] [verb] [prep] [be] " in BNC.

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31 The Home Office sent a detective to report on the movements of ‘ the French people ’ — they were assumed to be foreign as they did not have a Somerset accent .
32 Now they were assumed to be — well , gay , but not in the sense he acknowledged .
33 When their reports of what they were thinking about were examined , it was found that these were frequently bizarre , commonly involved complex stories with visual imagery and , so far as the experimenters were concerned , were indistinguishable from dream reports .
34 In addition they were perceived to be inefficient , measured in terms of productivity , and also unprofitable , causing a drain on public finances .
35 Both Warnie and Minto were jealous of anyone who claimed Jack 's love ; this meant that they were bound to be jealous of one another , since for both of them Jack was the most important person in the universe .
36 And with those computers they were bound to be receptive . ’
37 It was positively dangerous because it involved the Jews in a game in which they were bound to be discredited .
38 At the time , they were believed to be the bones of James .
39 They were believed to be suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia .
40 But what they were getting at was n't so much that the coverage was favouring one party over another but that it simply did n't relate to them , the actual voters in the constituency .
41 They were getting to be quite good friends now , after an initial slightly guilty mistrust on Belinda 's part .
42 The medical profession found his theories very difficult to shake off , even when they were demonstrated to be manifestly false .
43 I thought they were pretending to be offended — but people were honestly upset by it and I was flabbergasted . ’
44 The party 's spin-doctors had remained sceptical about the polls , but they were expecting to be able to argue that the Conservatives had lost their mandate , even if they were clinging to power in a hung parliament .
45 ‘ The public were placed in fear when they were expecting to be shopping peacefully .
46 To aggravate all this further , the records all sound as though they were designed to be played on compact disc .
47 That means that they were designed to be viewed right through at one sitting .
48 They were allowed to be " autonomous participants in international and foreign economic ties " .
49 If all Preston 's childhood friends had lined up against a wall , as when they were waiting to be picked for football , Preston would most likely have left William to pretty near the end and then put him at left back , or somewhere he would do the least damage to his own side .
50 Others living at the house said they were waiting to be reunited with Marita and her Mr Loren to find out exactly what happened .
51 They were meant to be a pro group while we were just starting out .
52 They were meant to be for his weight but I 'm not sure I believe that .
53 There were hundreds of companies coming to us for funds and they were meant to be writing their business plans properly and cogently .
54 They were meant to be The Rolling Stones of their time .
55 Most of all , although they were meant to be secret , these were secrets that were fairly indifferently kept ; if , indeed , they were kept at all .
56 No-one was quite sure whether they were meant to be in fancy dress but anyhow there were a couple decent Santa 's , a smith grinding policeman , and a ridiculous looking Dave ‘ Kowabunga-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle-Most-Unfortunately-named-clothing-company-of-the-century ’ Davis , dressed in poncho and sombrero .
57 The National Sound Archive does n't claim to be the natural home for gramophones or other equipment , but it does have a small historical collection , because to understand the recordings , some knowledge of how they were meant to be played is desirable .
58 This way she could simply wash it each morning and let it dry naturally — start trying for styles and valuable minutes had to be wasted keeping them the way they were meant to be .
59 They can never realize the parental aspiration other than in a superficial way , and they are left not only with the envy of the sex they were meant to be , but also unable to enjoy the sex which they are and the advantages which pertain to it .
60 They were meant to be devoid of personal feelings , deadpan , like lawyers who had to defend a case they did n't believe in , who went home at the end of the day leaving all their patients ' foibles filed away in their consulting rooms .
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