Example sentences of "they [was/were] the " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | They were the result of catholic — nationalist success in establishing a separate state , so separate that the protestant tradition as a political force had been excised from the thinking of the entire catholic grouping in the South , from church to state to popular consciousness . |
| 2 | These were not able to afford education or were unable to pass the necessary scholarship or entrance exams , or they were the sons and daughters of artisans seeking similar type craft training for their offspring . |
| 3 | ‘ Our boys ’ were being nurtured in the belief that they were the leaders of tomorrow , the ‘ happy few ’ who would one day be running whatever had now taken the place of the Empire . |
| 4 | I saw a whole border of them in Germany , but they were the only plants without a name tag ! |
| 5 | They were shaped — they were the shells of cottages , each one reduced to its ground plan , one course of massive stones , roughly masoned , with rounded ones at the four corners . |
| 6 | They were the days when many passengers were afraid to enter a secondclass compartment believing ( because of its quality ) it must be a first , of a mixture of vacuum and air-braked stock , steam and electric heating , and continual development and changes with the design of bogies . |
| 7 | They were the gate by which he entered on to the path which led ultimately to his acceptance as the authority on the distribution of arctic-alpine flora in Britain . |
| 8 | These phrases , and others like them , have been debated and pondered , interpreted and reinterpreted , as though they were the formulations of the great philosophers of the past , like Plato or Kant , rather than the work of a living thinker in mid-career . |
| 9 | They were the same terms which Dante and the mediaeval jurists insisted on : Virgil was great , was perpetually relevant and in that sense ‘ a classic ’ ( if not , more exactingly , the one indisputable ‘ classic ’ ) , because in him could be found what Dante teased out of him — the vision of Empire , of the divinely appointed imperium , which must be reconciled ( this way and that , for the reconciling was not easy ) with the no less divinely intended ecclesia . |
| 10 | WHEN Sara Gomer , Clare Wood and Julie Salmon collapsed to a 2-1 defeat to Indonesia in the first round of the Federation Cup in Melbourne last December , they were the laughing stock of the tennis world , writes our correspondent from Tokyo . |
| 11 | They were the sport of rich noblemen who hunted and ate them with terrific enthusiasm — until there were none . |
| 12 | It took as long again for their theories to be discredited , despite the fact that almost none of their Hollywood idols would agree that they were the sole auteur of the films they made ; while the greatest weakness of their belief was that the most flawed work by one of their preferred film-makers was of more interest than a major piece by one of those they did not rate . |
| 13 | It must be added that they were the better team , had the outstanding individual in Gordon Strachan and deserved the victory procured by a touch of finesse which could have Vinny Jones drummed out of the cloggers ' union . |
| 14 | To Victoria Roberts , a young full-time party worker from London , they were the only two in serious contention and she was backing Mr Heseltine : ‘ Mrs Thatcher is a strong leader , and we will need a moderate Tory who will be equally strong — there goes my career . ’ |
| 15 | I walked alongside the men at the head of the column and soon learned they were the Black Watch , a well-known Scottish regiment . |
| 16 | But Sun/Star readers were less interested in politics even than Mirror readers ; and they were the least likely to tune in to highbrow news programmes such as Newsnight , Channel 4 News , or Radio 4 news . |
| 17 | However , that reflected the fact that readers of highbrow papers were more likely to place their faith in the press , and they were the least likely to change their voting intentions . |
| 18 | They were the only ones with glass windows and metal roofs . |
| 19 | In 1922 they were the hub of the maelstrom that was the great famine of 1921–2 . |
| 20 | But soon he discovered that politicians were more interesting than colonels so he arranged his soldiers as though they were the House of Commons and made them harangue each other . |
| 21 | On odd nights that would worry me but in time I realised they were the kind of neighbours who never caused a disturbance . |
| 22 | Frequently , they were the key to the constant moving frontier of the Bantu expansion . |
| 23 | On the tides of Dublin or London they were hardly more than specks of froth but together they were the aristocratic Morans of Great Meadow , a completed world , Moran 's daughters . |
| 24 | Together they were the opposite of women who will nod and nod as they pretend to listen to another , waiting for the first pause of breath to muscle in with the growing pains and glories of their own house , the impatience showing on their faces as they wait . |
| 25 | For example , the law of supply and demand , as it operated in nineteenth-century England , he argues , was not simply a matter of eternal logic , nor were such rights as that of private property self-evident truths , but rather they were the product of particular historical circumstances . |
| 26 | Perhaps they were the last days before the final eclipse . |
| 27 | They were the crumbs of comfort the leisured classes craved to assuage the draughty chill of English baronial halls . |
| 28 | They were the unsung heroes of the whole appeal . |
| 29 | They were the last words they spoke to each other . |
| 30 | ‘ I thought they were the only party that could rule Namibia . |