Example sentences of "[subord] [noun] [verb] [be] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | But where music has been a constant right through the ages , cinema has been a product of its time . |
| 2 | France and Belgium were the two lesser industrial powers and although France had been a big eighteenth-century producer of coal , her resources were unable to provide her with the fuel she needed for industry on the German scale . |
| 3 | If Wordsworth had been a simple country boy , they could have patronized him ; the Johnsonian style of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads showed that he could write like the gentlemanly reviewers if he wanted to , and nothing is more infuriating than one of our own sort who ‘ lets the side down ’ . |
| 4 | If Ramsbum had been a human being Amiss might have suspected that he was seriously feeling grief . |
| 5 | If Stamford had been a vigorous industrial town like Nottingham or Leicester , the results of this feudal control would have been disastrous for the health and housing of the population . |
| 6 | If Hazel had been a human being he would have been expected to introduce his companions one by one and no doubt each would have been taken in charge as a guest by one of their hosts . |
| 7 | If Rassendyll escapes being a sentimental hero it is because of the spare , simple plots and the headlong speed of the narrative which carry his idealistic musings along . |
| 8 | If Cramlington had been a designated New Town then all their housing would have been built on land which was designated as housing land before it was sold to them . |
| 9 | Do you think we would have been better off if Dad had been a small-time failure . |
| 10 | If Charlie had been a different man , a cultivated man or effeminate or living in a bygone age when tongues were more freely unloosed , he might now have embraced Jack and told him from a full heart how he entered wholly into his joy and would die for his happiness . |
| 11 | There was no lack of enterprise in founding monasteries or endowing them ; it seems likely that if spinsters had been a serious problem to the fathers of the age , more convents of nuns would have appeared . |
| 12 | Despite what had happened between them , because it had been what she had wanted at the time and because Rune had been a generous and not over-demanding lover , and because she loved him , her own sense of self-esteem had remained whole . |
| 13 | Even without insisting on the strict claim that inference from fact to value is logically inadmissible , a claim which since Hume has been a commonplace , and after G. E. Moore 's analysis of the Naturalistic Fallacy was for some time an orthodoxy , it has been convenient to stay out of range of standard criticisms by showing that we can get along well enough without resorting to this kind of inference . |
| 14 | It was only a few years since Schiaparelli had been a living pan-cultural matrix , a cosmopolitan crossroads of the solar system , where all the client races of Capella could co-exist in noisy harmony , or pass through , haggling , to the caravanserais of the south . |
| 15 | It was by now that and I wondered whether chilli had been a good choice for a hot meal . |
| 16 | Unlike some of his theological colleagues , Bishop Montefiore is not afraid to state that the question of whether God exists is a definite question of fact . |
| 17 | The assassins had never been traced , and the British authorities had said they were Sinn Feiners ; it was a stupid accusation , for MacCurtain had been a staunch Republican himself , so nobody had any doubt that the killers were Black and Tans . |
| 18 | She told me that once again she was convinced that her life as Daniel had been a real one . |
| 19 | A stress on responsibilities as well as rights has been a significant and long-standing feature of the British culture and has been well imbued by a large part of the nation 's political elite . |