Example sentences of "[verb] be merely a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | But if what is sought is merely a gross comparison between the damage of corporate and ‘ conventional ’ crimes , then the current level of official information available provides sufficient facts to get the ratio in perspective . |
| 2 | ( i ) Which of the notations introduced in 2.6.3(ii) is used is merely a matter of personal difference . |
| 3 | What rush hour exists is merely a breeze of bicycles . |
| 4 | He was a North-countryman , and the bluntness of his approach to many issues should be considered , I think , as a traditional North-country attitude , exaggerated at times to the point of obtuseness ; it may have been merely a defence mechanism . |
| 5 | Any tenderness between the two of them would be a sham as far as he was concerned , merely serving to emphasise the absence of love , and perhaps like her he felt that a relationship characterised by so much other feeling ought to be loving as well , that the depth of desire he felt for her should have been merely a facet of love instead of the whole . |
| 6 | From this viewpoint , gametes and the genes they carry are merely a device whereby organisms produce offspring like themselves . |
| 7 | This pleased his Peripatetic opponents who asserted with Aristotle that sinking or floating was merely a matter of shape . |
| 8 | I am referring , after all , to a series of very minor errors on my part and the course I am now pursuing is merely a means of pre-empting any ‘ problems ’ before one arises . |
| 9 | First of all it had been merely a sense of unease , an occasional visitor . |
| 10 | The pretence that his , Surkov 's , opening had been merely a dream was a pathetic cliché . |
| 11 | However , all serious historians have noted that the 1925 decisions had been merely a formality , more honoured in the breach than in their application . |
| 12 | At first it had been merely a matter of borrowing her mother 's scarves and veils , draping these around herself or twisting them into turbans and sashes . |
| 13 | Until this point , the structure of government outside Whitehall had been merely a matter which worried civil servants who wished to see their departmental policies executed more rapidly and efficiently , though some Liberals , some academics and sections of the ‘ quality press ’ had shown a passing interest in the subject . |
| 14 | Cetera was subsequently cleared ( only to die later in mysterious circumstances ) but the real worry , for the DIA , was that the Italian court also found that the drug trafficking had been merely a cover , to justify payments to the Kabbaras as DEA informants . |
| 15 | This motivated dealers more than a previously introduced incentive to sell PEPS which had been merely an increase in dealers ' OTC takeback allowance . |
| 16 | Furthermore , ever since it became an independent department it has wanted to stop being merely a postman between the Treasury and the recipients of funds , and aspires instead to set the policy framework . |
| 17 | Growth by suckering is merely an extension of its own life ; it achieves reproduction by producing seeds which are encased in the edible fruit so fondly admired by birds . |
| 18 | It was n't that I was n't listening , I heard him all right ; but I was busy with my own thoughts , or , rather , my own feelings — the two were inextricably mixed together at this moment — and what he said was merely a background to the tumult that was going on inside me . |
| 19 | The disruptions caused by newcomers have been merely a tangible symptom of this change . |
| 20 | This chapter is not itself concerned with the mechanics or politics of the matter , the example chosen is merely a convenient one for purposes of illustrating a very common GIS procedure . |