Example sentences of "[was/were] [verb] [pron] [noun] " in BNC.
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| 1 | If newspapers had been available when marauding hordes from all over the continent were ravaging our land , the people who had managed to settle in one spot for three or four generations would be complaining bitterly that the Angles , Saxons , Jutes , Danes , Romans , Vikings , etc were overrunning the traditions of the island . |
| 2 | Many were simply too busy doing other things , and although not all were involved in the student tides discussed , a majority of them were devoting their energies to extracurricular activities . |
| 3 | The people who were devoting their lives to transforming society into an egalitarian paradise could not be expected to live like other people who had nothing better on their minds than scratching a living . |
| 4 | In 1338 the northern clergy were to instruct their parishioners about the crucial need for , and inescapable burdens of , defence against the Scots , so that the ‘ pious exhortations ’ of the priests might induce support for a united struggle against the enemies of the realm . |
| 5 | while Swindon folk were enjoying their ice hockey … the sporting fans of Bletchley were being entertained with something a little more graceful … |
| 6 | The weather was fine and they were enjoying their walk when they came across the neglected remains of a large house which they had often seen in the distance from the pump-house . |
| 7 | It was a sunny autumn afternoon in 1963 as John and Mary Briggs were walking along a disused trackbed in the West Country with their two Jack Russell terriers , Tina and Spot , who were enjoying their walk as much as their owners . |
| 8 | A future director of the National Theatre who admired Leavis 's lectures at Cambridge has since remarked that ‘ all we students pretended we sped to his lectures to imbibe his humanism , ’ whereas in fact they were enjoying his character-assassinations : ‘ Strange that a great moralist should be so destructive about creative artists . ’ |
| 9 | After years of subsidising their son , they were enjoying his fame . |
| 10 | She had to acknowledge that she was having extremely strong feelings for her enigmatic boss — feelings that were defying her ability to control them . |
| 11 | While we were unloading our bags and paying the driver , a bus behind us began honking its horn impatiently . |
| 12 | Would n't you generate a more positive attitude if you were aligned your increase or the request for an increase through the a an increase in activity in the church itself ? |
| 13 | The Pope hinted to the mission that much embarrassment could be avoided if the King were to arrange his divorce without consulting Rome . |
| 14 | Within two weeks we were encouraging our readers to lobby their MPs concerning the restrictive Night Assemblies Bill , Robert Tripp was regaling us with tales of groupies and interviews had taken on a new air of contention , seriousness and madness . |
| 15 | Soon three spiders were inching their way along the wall towards a small window on the ground floor . |
| 16 | Though the coalition government were allowing their TDs — the Irish equivalent for MPs — a free vote on the issue , its parties , Fine Gael and Labour , officially sponsored the campaign for the constitutional change . |
| 17 | At the bottom of the garden his brethren of the cloth were submitting his character to a sustained and vicious mauling . |
| 18 | If the dream were to lose its power , if she were somehow to prevent it recurring , she must face again the memory of that afternoon nearly thirty years ago . |
| 19 | As it was , some 50,000 soldiers were to lose their lives during the next few months in fruitless attacks on Chunuk Bair . |
| 20 | In the intervening period 73,600 Royal Navy personnel , about 30,000 merchant seamen , and almost 6,000 members of RAF Coastal Command were to lose their lives , as did more than 29,000 crewmen from German submarines . |
| 21 | If these people were to lose their jobs , they would fill Murrayfield to overflowing ! |
| 22 | She feels there is a real shortage of teaching jobs and says if she were to lose her job tomorrow she would want to do something . |
| 23 | If natural selection were given its head , and an infinite amount of time to work in , then it seems that all lineages would tend inexorably towards ‘ perfection ’ ; where perfection was defined as perfect adaptation . |
| 24 | The troops were given their briefing in the hall . |
| 25 | Sea pens were given their names when people wrote with quills and very apt it must have seemed , for not only are they shaped like feathers but their skeleton is flexible and horny . |
| 26 | So in 1877 the men at the Middleton Iron Company were given their notice , though they stubbornly clung to short-time employment until 1883 when the plant was shut down completely until 1897 . |
| 27 | The police were given whatever resources they needed to preserve law and order and access to the pits . |
| 28 | We were given our books at Milton but we got back . |
| 29 | At a torch-lit ceremony held on the regimental parade ground two nights later , we were given our képis . |
| 30 | If I were given my head , which I never am or will be ( for I am impotent . |