Example sentences of "[was/were] [pron] [prep] an " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Indeed , one had only to go to Rhodesia to see the ample supply of consumer goods in the shops from every part of the world to realise that sanctions were nothing but an empty farce , and that the claim that they were going to bring Mr Ian Smith to his knees was a total fraud . |
| 2 | they were nothing but an excuse for idleness ; twelve hours being too many for a man to work underground without intermission . |
| 3 | In drama we act as if we were someone else , or as if we were ourselves in an other situation . |
| 4 | To him , they were something of an adventure , a small knock at the system which gave him the illusion of individual importance . |
| 5 | Although very much the ‘ poor commons ’ paying for the most part a 5 per cent tax on their goods , they were anything but an undifferentiated whole . |
| 6 | His death was nothing but an absurd , ludicrous accident . |
| 7 | This was nothing but an elaborate hoax perpetrated by her in revenge for all the suffering I had caused her . |
| 8 | Next morning the whole village was nothing but an island in a lake of rain . |
| 9 | Even in terms of his own quite awesome power he was nothing but an underling in relation to his superior . |
| 10 | Steel City : from inside it was nothing but an overcrowded nexus of radials smelling of close-pressed bodies and metal and chemicals . |
| 11 | There was nothing but an old , rickety fence between the playground and the water . |
| 12 | The hand had the warmth of personal feeling , whereas the theatrical sigh with which she said her last words was nothing but an actressy trick from a bad radio play . |
| 13 | Sometimes her common sense still told her it was nothing but an invention for dirtying three times as many dishes , this business of frying and parboiling , and moving things from plate to plate . |
| 14 | AYRTON SENNA did all he could to keep the championship open by yesterday winning the Spanish Grand Prix which , after a week of accusations and exclusions , was something of an anti-climax . |
| 15 | It has not been so long since the average chartered or company secretary was something of an eminence grise , rather than being in the front-line . |
| 16 | Even though as a graduate I was something of an oddity , I was absorbed into the background after a time and people treated me as one of them . |
| 17 | Richard Holmes was something of an expert at the game , but he ended up as a down-and-out by the end . |
| 18 | But the game was something of an anti-climax . |
| 19 | He replied that the older Czechs were wary of the idea of a unified Germany but , for the young , West Germany was something of an ideal whereas they despised the DDR . |
| 20 | I expect I would have gone anyway ; it was something of an event . ’ |
| 21 | But there was something of an occasion , even a ceremony , even a sacrament , in the way , on this evening , she set out the food and the vessels . |
| 22 | He was something of an experimentalist , being particularly interested in glanders ( he claimed success in some cases from treatment with cantharides ) and in the circulatory system . |
| 23 | But as the venture was something of an experiment , and we might have to move south again before long , we decided to rent a house rather than buy one . |
| 24 | Cameroon was something of an exception in having a number of privately owned papers : L'Echo du Cameroun , Dialogue , Le Petit Camerounais and Les Nouvelles du Mungo . |
| 25 | But Qinghua was something of an exception , being China 's top technological university , with better facilities than other institutions and a high level of prestige . |
| 26 | Each , in his own way , was something of an expert , especially Mayhew and Abercrombie who also had solid rugby backgrounds . |
| 27 | Apparently he was something of an acrobat as well . |
| 28 | Britain was something of an exception , however , not only because of the slow development of the large corporation and mass-production techniques , but also because of the effects of a long-established , powerful and horizontally-structured trade union movement which opposed such firm-specific practices and internal labour market systems . |
| 29 | Bel-Hathor seemed an inauspicious choice ; like most Sapherian princes he was something of an eccentric . |
| 30 | Thus emboldened , Sotheby 's issued their 1 April catalogue to a chorus of disapproval , the most jolting being a letter from Toronto doctor Morton Shulman , who was something of an authority on Schlossmuseum Gotha , having acquired a seventeenth-century clock that had once belonged to the museum . |