Example sentences of "[was/were] a thing of the " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | IN THE days when a pocket calculator cost £100 and microcomputers were a thing of the future , I saw a niche for a book of cartoons of the genre that appeared in the computer rags . |
| 2 | His face shadowed as the thought of Ray Doyle 's punctured body made him realise that perhaps Doyle 's oriental interests were a thing of the past , now . |
| 3 | I had hoped that these weekends of dashing about Britain with estate agents ' details in my lap were a thing of the past . |
| 4 | Unemployment , now a major problem , was in the mid-seventies only a threat ; privatisation was not an issue ; government attacks on the trade union movement were a thing of the future . |
| 5 | The Scottish TV holdings , too , were a thing of the past . |
| 6 | Social commentators of the 1950s and early 1960s claimed that with the burgeoning of the ‘ affluent society ’ the major class inequalities of industrial society were a thing of the past . |
| 7 | Sectarian politics were a thing of the past . |
| 8 | Deferential coppers were a thing of the past ; they had all been conscripted into the House of Commons ' police . |
| 9 | Well we do n't really actually have any schools si I mean schools of psychology were a thing of the fifties really , there 's no identifiable school of psychol |
| 10 | They said cottage hospitals were a thing of the past and uneconomical . |
| 11 | Trading standards officers thought the days of faulty hot brushes were a thing of the past . |
| 12 | Only a miracle could save Germany , and belief in miracles was a thing of the past . |
| 13 | Nothing could have been better designed to ram home to the Scots that monarchy as they understood it was a thing of the past . |
| 14 | It became clear that the shy , sensitive persona previously adopted by Morrissey was a thing of the past . |
| 15 | For Best and Marinello the George and Ringo of football stardom was a thing of the past and as the ‘ 60s receded into the '90s all that was left was a future that football would ultimately disown . |
| 16 | These precedents did not settle the balance of power between bishops and kings ; but they helped to clarify their different functions ; and function was a thing of the highest importance in the complex hierarchy of medieval society . |
| 17 | RJR , P&G , Coca-Cola , PepsiCo , Quaker Oats and Gillette were all bludgeoned by traders convinced that the explosive profit growth once delivered by branded standard-bearers was a thing of the past . |
| 18 | For the French , who declared that old-style exploitation of colonies was a thing of the past , all that they said was necessary were economic and social programmes to dissipate ‘ the racial hatred that was drummed up by immature political leaders ’ . |
| 19 | The family was a thing of the past . |
| 20 | The true Gothic city , as Pugin indicates in his contrasting townscapes of 1440 and 1840 ( Fig. 30 ) , was a thing of the past , not only because its architecture had largely been destroyed , but even more because the spirit that had animated it had been wholly lost . |
| 21 | Cheerful idleness was a thing of the past — and so was a readiness for whole hearted participation in activities unrelated to the business of getting grades . |
| 22 | By 1864 his interest in Christianity and his deference to family expectations were still strong enough to lead him to the choice of theology as one of his two subjects at Bonn ; but there is no doubt that belief was a thing of the past . |
| 23 | The women tolerated me , even if respect was a thing of the past , and Emily Lightbody kept them in order . |
| 24 | And , ’ obscurely , ‘ my behaviour ’ , as you call it , might have been very different if I 'd known Hugh was a thing of the past . ’ |
| 25 | By his day the sort of German pressure on Denmark experienced by Harald Bluetooth was a thing of the past , for Henry was fully occupied with campaigns in Italy and Lotharingia , and especially against Cnut 's uncle Boleslav of Poland , and may have troubled little about Swegen and Cnut , who were presumably happy to leave the Germans largely to their own devices while they were subjugating England . |