Example sentences of "[was/were] [adj] or [adv] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The ironical thing was that all the time , in a stack in Hilbert 's desk , secured by a rubber band , were fifty or so old postcards collected by Hilbert and Lilian presumably on early travels and among them were two of Greece , one of Mount Lycabettos and the other the very view Rufus had spoken of so scathingly . |
| 2 | Particularly striking exemplars are the penannular neck ornaments or torcs , the hoops of which were hollow or more often formed of twisted rods or finer wires , having loop terminals decorated by lost-wax casting combined with surface tooling ( fig. 19 ) . |
| 3 | City Lands director Peter Coffey said alternative access routes were impractical or too costly . |
| 4 | Yes , there were 300 or so other overs bowled on the four days of play permitted by the weather , with nine innings passing 50 , and even the extras in England 's innings passing the half-century . |
| 5 | Generally , these cash buyers seemed to have made a fair assessment of their chances , in that they were unemployed or already had great difficulty matching small incomes to their outgoings . |
| 6 | Conversely , national issues which were serious or even explosive before 1914 have receded : I am thinking of the famous ‘ Macedonian Question ’ , the Ukraine , or even the demand for the restoration of historic Poland . |
| 7 | Corruption was not normally a problem among judges and magistrates , but in the early and mid-nineteenth century many of these officials were incompetent or excessively eccentric . |
| 8 | I explained that this would make no difference as the results would be the same , whether the past lives were real or simply figments of her imagination . |
| 9 | For a moment Ruth wondered if he were real or just a ghost . |
| 10 | Most of the people , just over two thirds , who spent all the last year of their life in a residential or nursing home were 85 or more , and it is this age group which is predicted to increase most rapidly in the next twenty years ( Central Statistical Office ( CSO ) , 1989 ) so it is likely that increasing numbers will spend the last year of their lives in such homes . |
| 11 | Despite the fact that regular maintenance was a statutory requirement and despite some successful legal actions to enforce the statutory provisions , regular dredging and attention to leaks were perfunctory or never carried out at all by canal companies owned by the railways . |
| 12 | In the case of 44% , it only happened once ; for 29% it happened more than once with the same person ; for 19% there were three or more different people on separate occasions . |
| 13 | COUNSEL : So you do n't really know whether the forces were large or very large ; your term " considerable " has little real meaning in regard to this case ? |
| 14 | Former nurse Joan Young , from Darlington , explains : ‘ Most children must have been told not to pick dandelions when they were younger or else they would wet the bed . |
| 15 | The activity obtained at an intermediate ionic strength ( 70 mM ammonium sulphate ) was about 80% of that observed at the lowest concentration used ( 20 mM ) , a situation in which the activity of P A2b in linear templates was of about 10% if the initiating NTPs were present or even lower in their absence . |
| 16 | I know , I know Brian would n't at least three but , and this , and this was n't really big enough and they use two side by side , whenever they were late or away for a weekend I took over and see to the cats feed , they were sweet erm used to come on the porch and meow at me , it 's my dinner time , come on , just get not time yet , used to come to the porch , and tell me , they used to know when I was n't coming home , how do they do it ? |
| 17 | He considered whether he could tell if they were black or very brightly coloured ; and if black , why did they have the brilliance that usually attached to colour ? |
| 18 | Where the peasantry remained ‘ pre-commercial , ’ as in large parts of Russia and among the emancipated slaves of the Americas who returned to subsistence peasant agriculture , the estate retained this advantage , but without the physical compulsions of serfdom or slavery it now found it more difficult to obtain labour , unless the former slaves or serfs were landless or so short of land as to be obliged to become hired labourers — and unless there was no more attractive labour for them to take . |
| 19 | Did such calculations vary in different kin relationships , especially between kin who were closer or more distant in genealogical terms ? |
| 20 | It has been estimated that in the years 1877–1904 70 per cent of Pomeranian farmland was held in large estates and only 30 per cent in peasant smallholdings of various kinds : about two-thirds of Pomeranian farmers were smallholders living in the most appalling poverty ; their assets were non-existent or too small for them to think of trekking westwards to look for factory work ; they were too poor to pay cash for their land , and too impoverished for any bank to risk giving them a loan . |
| 21 | This model provided a way of visualizing the pattern of morphogenetic systems over the earth 's surface during the Cainozoic and so lent itself to a clear way of integrating contemporary world zones with those of the past when ice sheets were non-existent or much less extensive . |
| 22 | In February 1990 Her Majesty 's Inspectors reported that 30 per cent of school lessons and 20 per cent in colleges were poor or very poor . |
| 23 | Even more importantly it showed that millions of electors could be made to take a stand in favour of the League of Nations , towards which many Conservatives were cynical or even hostile . |
| 24 | Four of these cancers were well or moderately well differentiated , and five of the six bone scans obtained yielded negative results . |
| 25 | Since most of the prostatic cancers detected in this study had not metastasised to bone and were well or moderately well differentiated these patients might have suffered if detection had been delayed . |
| 26 | In a questionnaire follow up of mainly polysymptomatic patients ( median duration nine years , 70% response ) the number of severe and frequent symptoms had reduced from five to one per patient more than six months after inpatient investigation and 38% said that they were well or almost well . |
| 27 | It was totally unbalanced — there were ten or so Labour people , and about four hundred Conservatives — it sat for about three hours every day , and there were a great number like Halifax , Salisbury , Beaverbrook who had been prominent in political life . |
| 28 | There were fifteen or so others present , many of them Privy Councillors , all of considerable party or national weight . |
| 29 | You fought them , dared them , had adventures and special likings , thought they were daft or dirty minded . |
| 30 | But this would be to little avail if the ground were waterlogged or so acid as to prevent the normal action of soil life . |