Example sentences of "was not so [adv] a [noun sg] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The noted Maori boys college was not so much a rugby school as a school of rugby , fielding 13 rugby teams , one football side and one hockey team from its 350 pupils , as well as producing the best school XV in the country . |
| 2 | Turning the Map : Images from the Americas part one , Christopher Columbus reached America 500 years ago and amid the celebrations of his achievement this two-part exhibition by photographers from all over that continent reminds us that America is not just one country and Columbus ' arrival was not so much a discovery , but more the beginning of colonisation by Europeans ( until 21 Feb ) . |
| 3 | Clara could not explain to the school that it was not so much a question of finance , as of her mother 's instinctive opposition to any pleasurable project — and anyone could see that a visit to Paris could not possibly fail to entail more pleasure than instruction . |
| 4 | He had not worked out tactics to deal with what was not so much a surrender as a bid to form an immediate alliance . |
| 5 | This was not so much a service as a lot of clowning about to biblical themes . |
| 6 | In retrospect the decline of the tram in Britain was not so much a response to technological change but more a decision to cut capital investment in public transport . |
| 7 | And what was tending to happen here , as the Scottish Typographical Circular regularly reported , was not so much a division of labour between women on straight setting and men on other processes , but rather the diversion of certain kinds of typesetting from the linesmen ( male piece-workers ) to the women , who were not only paid much less but who were also considered by some employers to be actually better at it . |
| 8 | Though Masonry was always to be an element in the liberal forces — particularly in later non-socialist brands of Republicanism — it was never again , as it was from 1815 to 1820 , its chief framework ; even then it was not so much a system of belief as the only clandestine organization available for conspiracy . |
| 9 | In the sense of their access to political power it was not so much a case that women were ‘ returned ’ to the family since they had never really left it to go out to get power — rather they had traditionally exercised power , if at all , by virtue of their familial positions and as the public and private spheres were separated , women were left behind . |
| 10 | It was not so much a case of social science theories being senseless , misguided or absurd , but more to do with their serious lack of evidential support . |
| 11 | It was not so much a case of Glasgow getting worse as one of the rest of the country improving faster . |
| 12 | It was not so much a feeling of disquiet as of expectation , almost pleasurable anticipation . |
| 13 | This rewriting of history was not so much a matter of starting again , but of making use , for a new purpose , of knowledge which was already available , whether in the work of philosophers like Hegel , economists like Ricardo , biologists like Darwin , or anthropologists . |
| 14 | Liam Brady 's choice of more or less the side who lost to Falkirk in the Scottish Cup the previous weekend — Rudi Vata was replaced by Brian O'Neil — was not so much a vote of confidence as a challenge to those players to prove they could not be so bad again . |
| 15 | It was not so much a guidance note as a review ; the Committee 's terms of reference had been to consider the design and layout most appropriate to various types of roads in built-up areas , with due regard to safety , the free Mow of road traffic , economy and the requirements of town planning , and to make recommendations . |
| 16 | To many Churchill was not so much a buccaneer as a straightforward pirate , a political outcast who skated on thin ice deliberately to keep himself in the public eye , a man who polished brilliant and wounding phrases that tacitly suggested himself as the alternative should his jeremiads turn out true . |
| 17 | The point should not be overemphasized , since on occasion this sense of duty was not so much a cause of action but a post hoc justification of it . |
| 18 | By the end of The Order of Things , however , he revises this somewhat conventional thesis to suggest that what was involved was not so much a move from a static to a historical view of things as the break-up of a common , unified historical time-scheme in which every phenomenon had had its place in the same space and chronology . |
| 19 | And when we begin to gain , if only the merest glimpse of the deeply ingrained brutalities and prejudices embodied in what was judged to be ‘ right ’ , then we can see more clearly that the Garotter 's Act was not so much a moment of panic which led respectable England off its true course , but a mature expression of the existing social relations — including the self-assumption of the mighty , and their attitudes and actions towards the lower orders and the plebs . |
| 20 | Like John after him , he was not so much a tinker as a brazier , a mender and purveyor of household utensils , with a forge beside his cottage . |
| 21 | It was not so much a letter , as an ultimatum . |
| 22 | It was n't so much a case of thinking : he looks a lovely chappie . |
| 23 | There was n't so much a noise as a change in the type of silence . |
| 24 | He was n't so much a boyfriend as a boy who was one of my friends . ’ |