Example sentences of "[pers pn] [was/were] merely a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | I was merely a naval officer , with some years ' experience in intelligence , and two languages . |
| 2 | What last thin pretence had remained that I was merely a guest lay discarded . |
| 3 | My Mam was ‘ the boss ’ at home but outside that house she was merely a wife and mother , never a person in her own right . |
| 4 | Mounting the pulpit , I explained that she was merely a listener . |
| 5 | Doreen 's eyes continued to dart from one to the other ; then she made an attempt to put Lucy in her place by reminding her that she was merely a member of the staff . |
| 6 | In his arms she was no longer a thinking , rational person , she was merely a being consumed by the flames of need . |
| 7 | She was merely an old woman who wanted to spend a few minutes in nostalgic memory of long-ago visits to America . |
| 8 | Lévi-Strauss ' famous objections to Sartre , which appeared in the last chapter of The Savage Mind ( 1962 ) , are sometimes represented as if they were merely a structuralist attack on Marxism . |
| 9 | Even at their best in the early '80s , with the great Alison Phillips on drums , they were merely a poor man 's Fall/Three Johns/Creepers , although always reliable for a good live set . |
| 10 | Even at their best in the early '80s , with the great Alison Phillips on drums , they were merely a poor man 's Fall/Three Johns/Creepers , although always reliable for a good live set . |
| 11 | In Hart v. Edinburgh District Licensing Board , 1987 S.L.T. ( Sh.Ct. ) 54 , the sheriff reached the same conclusion , but for different reasons , holding that 17 effectively repealed the concluding words of the proviso to 5.6(3) on the ground that they were merely an erroneous re-enactment of the corresponding part of the 1959 Act ; see also Clive v. Nithsdale District Licensing Board , 1987 S.L.T. ( Sh.Ct. ) 113 . |
| 12 | The two of them were merely a couple of outstanding lady tennis players , one of whom had won Wimbledon . |
| 13 | If it were merely a handful of Irish psychopaths against us , they might be foiled by a piece of pasteboard with a photograph and some numbers stamped on it . |
| 14 | If it were merely a matter of eloquence , or energy or conviction , the education system , like other male institutions , would have been transformed by women already . |
| 15 | Four fences out , Llewellyn made his move , and from the next it was merely a question of whether Party Politics could hold on or whether Romany King could peg him back . |
| 16 | No one was sure whether he had deliberately set a trap , or whether it was merely a chance remark that brought about such astounding results . |
| 17 | It was merely a new version of an old horror , less tenable than the dreams of childhood , a more rational , more adult terror . |
| 18 | Providing you had memorised the five scale patterns and the associated chord shape for each one , it was merely a question of finding the chord shape in whatever key/position was required , and the appropriate scale fingering would follow . |
| 19 | A correspondent knows of one witness to the February 1992 sighting in Mrs Topliff 's house , and this person stated that it was merely a large domestic cat . |
| 20 | Wothorpe House , because of its ruinous state , its unusual design and its proximity to the site of Wothorpe nunnery , is also a victim of such mythology , but it was merely a dower house for widows of the earls and marquesses at Burghley . |
| 21 | It was merely a process of putting out delicate feelers , testing the winds and establishing a rough but workable scenario to contain the plot . |
| 22 | In those early days , that last week of June , it was merely a matter of raising enough money . |
| 23 | For Annabel , it was merely a means of filling in time before she starts rehearsals for her starring role in Cinderella in Norwich this month , when she appears with Gary Webster , of Minder , dancer Lionel Blair , and ‘ a lady from Teabag ’ , whose name she could n't remember . |
| 24 | ( This had no bearing on the incinerable nature of the occasion ; it was merely a great favourite of us both . ) |
| 25 | While the mortality rate at Rendcomb was high , it was merely a preparation for what pilots could expect to face in France . |
| 26 | The question has to be asked , however , if this was due to the activities of the ECSC or if it was merely a consequence of the sustained economic boom which affected the whole of Western Europe . |
| 27 | The impact of the BUF on British society in the 1930s was small ; it was merely a minor irritant for the government . |
| 28 | The pattern for these accusations had been set by the young Liberal Charles Masterman in The Heart of the Empire ( 1902 ) where he had thundered out his warning of inevitable decline as the result of the ‘ perpetual lowering in the vitality of the Imperial Race in the great cities of the Kingdom through over-crowding in room and in area ’ : What was never entirely clear was whether it was merely a physical deterioration that was eating away at the ‘ Imperial Race ’ , or if a moral decay was not also in evidence . |
| 29 | The Soviet Union saw no need to remain in military terms and appears to have thought it was merely a matter of time before communism was extended to the southern half of the peninsula . |
| 30 | However , the court agreed with the views expressed obiter by another division of the court in the case of Emerson ( 1990 ) 92 Cr.App.R. 284 ; where a transcript was provided it was merely a means of presenting the exhibit , which was the tape itself , to the court : if the jury wished to hear the tape rather than rely on the written transcript , there was no proper reason why they should not be allowed to do so . |