Example sentences of "[was/were] [pron] but [art] [adj] " in BNC.
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| 1 | It was possible that these men were nothing but a strong feint designed to draw the allies towards Charleroi while the real French thrust , fuelled by the Emperor 's presence , attacked twenty-five miles to the west at Mons. |
| 2 | I had a glimpse of a fair-haired girl staring wide-eyed and terrified from a tennis court , her racket held loose by her side and tennis balls scattered at her feet and , though the trees and buildings and gardens were nothing but a high-speed blur , my mind nevertheless registered with a startling clarity that the girl had been completely naked . |
| 3 | Seen through the disapproving eyes of respectable citizens they were nothing but a disorderly and disorganized rabble , dropouts from the social ladder . |
| 4 | And so the words turned back on themselves , phrases reappeared , seeming to confirm other phrases , merely repeating themselves , clicking into place with a semblance of logic which nicely disguised the truth that all these words were nothing but a glittering fabric which hovered above the ground , unwinding endlessly , slipping between the fingers , beguiling like a mirage , taking on whatever shape the conjuror wanted , and leading nowhere . |
| 5 | Indeed , one had only to go to Rhodesia to see the ample supply of consumer goods in the shops from every part of the world to realise that sanctions were nothing but an empty farce , and that the claim that they were going to bring Mr Ian Smith to his knees was a total fraud . |
| 6 | But no one here has treated me as though I were anything but a permanent staff member , so do n't have any worries on that score . ’ |
| 7 | Although very much the ‘ poor commons ’ paying for the most part a 5 per cent tax on their goods , they were anything but an undifferentiated whole . |
| 8 | The women believed that the PDC 's stated concern for their welfare was nothing but a hollow promise : |
| 9 | Today the president , Mrs Macpherson , in between gracefully shaking hands with each new arrival and presenting her to Mrs MacDonald , decided that she was nothing but a vulgar upstart , and she trembled with suppressed irritation at having to stand in the same receiving line with her . |
| 10 | She was the sort that keeps coming , that never knows when they 're licked … the mad cockerel I once hit with my toy cricket bat — it was an accident , of course it was , but I had to keep hitting it and hitting it until it was nothing but a bloody pulp on splintered sticks . |
| 11 | There , where I had hoped to see a fine , impressive house , was nothing but a blackened heap of stones , with the silence of death about it . |
| 12 | And once they climbed so high they entered the clouds and there was nothing but a great whiteness around them as if the world had been erased by a giant rubber . |
| 13 | And when they got there , they found that both anticipation and anxiety had overestimated the occasion , for like the reception at the Hôtel de Ville , the dance was nothing but a stifling , uncomfortable , noisy , joyless crush . |
| 14 | Seaward there was nothing but a pearly opalescence which , though it seemed likely to vanish at any moment , effectively blocked out sea and sky . |
| 15 | Luke Calder was nothing but a ruthless manipulator who made people do what he wanted when he wanted it , yet all she could think of was that she wanted to feel again the hot urgency of his mouth ! |
| 16 | And it was during this time that he had lost his wife , lost his job , lost his sense of himself as a separate human soul , and in struggle worked out the theory that he was nothing but a sick character in the hands or under the pen of a malevolent Author . |
| 17 | Men , it seemed , were scarcely tolerated in the Jarman household and Mr Hawkins was nothing but a leftover from the days when old Mr Jarman was alive . |
| 18 | A few years ago , there was nothing but a brief ‘ coming next ’ . |
| 19 | ‘ Your mother — that precious Maman you speak about with such reverence — was nothing but a common slut . |
| 20 | As I came over the brow , there was nothing but a windswept plateau . |
| 21 | According to clerical conservatives , liberalism was nothing but a permanent Masonic conspiracy . |
| 22 | Instead there was nothing but a pale mist-shadow pearling between the surfaces of reality . |
| 23 | But , she told herself sternly , she was nothing but a foolish girl , men the like of Craig Grenfell were not for Hari Morgan . |
| 24 | His death was nothing but an absurd , ludicrous accident . |
| 25 | The hand had the warmth of personal feeling , whereas the theatrical sigh with which she said her last words was nothing but an actressy trick from a bad radio play . |
| 26 | This was nothing but an elaborate hoax perpetrated by her in revenge for all the suffering I had caused her . |
| 27 | Steel City : from inside it was nothing but an overcrowded nexus of radials smelling of close-pressed bodies and metal and chemicals . |
| 28 | There was nothing but an old , rickety fence between the playground and the water . |
| 29 | There was nothing but the faint image of the stained glass in the front door where the moonlight streamed through , the ticking of the clock , the bundle of coats hanging from the hallstand . |
| 30 | Contemporary art was anything but the strong point of the Salon , with Paris dealers in particular showing a large number of deja vu works and recording few sales . |