Example sentences of "[vb past] [be] the only " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | His hall was built on a north-to-south axis , so that the wind blew through it constantly , keeping the air fresh ; but the odours of the spices and scented oils he used were the only ones a visitor might smell . |
| 2 | In his case words and the mental images that they created were the only available means of communication with his people . |
| 3 | Swam is the only word . |
| 4 | ‘ He was glad that Sigarup had come , because up to now he 'd been the only patient staying and , alone at night , he was terrified of ghosts — of the restless souls of all the people who must have died there , far from their homes and families . ’ |
| 5 | In the early 1970s he introduced a type of tournament competition called knockdown , which , since it allows full power strikes to the body , he believed was the only true test of a karateka 's fighting ability . |
| 6 | Jezrael hated being the only one there who wore a bodysuit but she would have hated more the embarrassment of displaying herself with all her imperfections to the crude and lumpen miners . |
| 7 | The third was the treatment by similars which he stated was the only sure way , apart from prevention , to treat disease . |
| 8 | What followed was the only bit of gamesmanship you could accuse Lee Trevino of . |
| 9 | Her ability to repeat what she heard was the only language task which she could perform at all well . |
| 10 | He is little known as a teacher , or as a local preacher , but in fact his first choice of occupation upon leaving school , in Holland , was — to use his own words — ‘ School-mastering and the Church ’ , which occupations he thought were the only professions worthy of consideration . |
| 11 | But if a matter came to a head that withdrawing my labour was the only way to resolve it , that I thought was the only way to resolve it , I 'd go out and do it again . |
| 12 | Newman came to the answer Rome ; the former friends he left behind in the Church of England replied that the early undivided Church had been the only one wholly to contain this supernatural essence . |
| 13 | Rob McKinnon had been the only Hartlepool player not pilloried in that game , and the 23-year-old left-back was the most impressive player again . |
| 14 | It had been Eleanor , quiet , firm , devoted whom Dorothea had loved , and Eleanor had been the only living person whose presence she could bear when Hallam died a year after their coming to Haverstock . |
| 15 | Faith had been the only sister to visit regularly , for Isabel and Kathleen were afraid , afraid of sickness and infirmity , of germs and ill-health and old age and death . |
| 16 | Prior to that , guilds had been the only groupings of workers . |
| 17 | In 1944–45 , the old hutted Emergency Hospital at Hexham near the Roman Wall had been the only home I had . |
| 18 | She had been the only passenger to alight from the two carriage train which she could still hear dimly in the distance , chuffing its way over the Severn Bridge on its way to Lydney . |
| 19 | It knew that the incident had been the only serious act of indiscipline during the strike and that Wilson had used it in his speech to taunt and smear the Ulster people . |
| 20 | Dudley Clarke had been the only casualty , hit in the ear , which had been sewn back in place by a petty officer as the boat left the beach . |
| 21 | It was not because I was particularly pious , but rather because my namesake , Nicholas Breakspear , had been the only Englishman who had ever become Pope . |
| 22 | Apart from Granny Tremayne , Edna had been the only other permanent reliable character in Celia 's youth . |
| 23 | The chaise longue had been the only piece to survive unscathed . |
| 24 | He knew that he had been the only really close friend and confidant of Modigliani from 1907 to 1914 , until they were separated by the war . |
| 25 | Until then cardboard tubes had been the only means of transporting and protecting artwork . |
| 26 | Irons and radios had been the only appliances owned by the majority of consumers before the War and they were joined by electric fires at the end of it . |
| 27 | Since 1980 the Standard had been the only survivor of the flourishing trio in 1945 . |
| 28 | Honey had been the only sweetener ; sugar had been as expensive as cinnamon or cloves and it could be taxed as a luxury in the firm belief that this would not make life harder for the working classes who were not thought to be consumers of sugar , though this was clearly changing in the eighteenth century . |
| 29 | Experience was regarded as " limited " in variety if among the youngest age group it was little or nothing ; among unmarried subjects over the age of 20 if there had been no sexual intercourse nor other stimulation to orgasm by another person ; and among older or married people if sexual intercourse , with its preliminary manual love-play , had been the only sexual activity . |
| 30 | The unfairness of this strikes me , since although we are all from families that vote Labour ( no working-class Catholic would vote Unionist ) Jimmy had been the only one in the class who 'd known that Hugh Gaitskell was the leader of the Opposition in the general knowledge quiz . |