Example sentences of "[was/were] [adv] a long " in BNC.

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1 ‘ You were away a long time , ’ said Pip .
2 The marshes were just a long black horizontal line .
3 They were usually a long way from the London merchants who set up as gentry , but this group represented nonetheless a significant local urban aristocracy .
4 Dustin Hoffman , Robert Redford , Gene Hackman and Robert De Niro were still a long way from making even their first films .
5 But the Inter City Firm from West Ham were around a long time before the Service Crew .
6 Some of them are rather like cave paintings are n't they and have they 've got this from my a sort of tedious association of the drawings and pictures and er Catherine 's it seems to be suggesting that animals were around , animals and other creatures were around a long time before human beings and that human beings are in some ways intruders therefore in their in their world .
7 IPSWICH Town may have had their minds on Saturday 's sixth round FA Cup tie against Arsenal because they were certainly a long way below their best against struggling Middlesbrough at Portman Road last night .
8 Whoever the child-murdering Mingrelians might be they were certainly a long way away .
9 Oh I thought he was dead a long time ago .
10 There was something rather reckless in my attending the present lectures at all , because it was in the depths of winter , and from where I now lived it was rather a long walk to the town — over a mile , at any rate .
11 I do n't know if you I hope you remember that question , it was rather a long one .
12 We did n't go on the motorbike that time , since Darlington was rather a long way and the general unreliability of the machine argued against using it .
13 But she was aware that she had been preoccupied a lot of the time , all too aware of the mountain of work before her , and that it was rather a long time since she and her daughter had had any special outings together .
14 Sorry , that was rather a long answer .
15 And if ‘ planning ’ is now possible at the level of the giant enterprise , perhaps straddling several branches of production , then the planning of the economy to meet social objectives is at least ‘ put on the agenda ’ : what was only a long run historical speculation in the era of smaller-scale entrepreneurial capitalism begins to look like an economically feasible proposition .
16 ‘ Well , the first record we did for RCA , it was literally a long hallway .
17 She was away a long time .
18 ‘ I 'll just put it here , ’ he said , taking it to a table which was just a long low slab of something transparent .
19 Oh they had it well would just be anything it was just a long roll th great big roll , just like It just sort of wrapped in a grey eh a big waterproof kind of co covering , and he would have er shirts and and er things like that for men to buy , or er and sometimes er overall or a pinny , as we said , for mother and the like of that .
20 It was not a long journey and as the sun was shining it was a very pleasant one .
21 It was not a long letter , written in an old-fashioned copperplate hand .
22 It was not a long telephone call .
23 The fight was not a long or bloody one .
24 There was always a long silence and I could see people thinking , ‘ Oh my God , this guy has lost it , big time . ' ’
25 The new chairman , Dr Gregor Gysi , told an emergency party congress at the weekend that the SED had made a start in ‘ breaking with Stalinism , ’ but added that there was still a long way to go in ‘ overcoming Stalinist structures ’ .
26 The new chairman , Dr Gregor Gysi , told an emergency party congress at the weekend that the SED had made a start in ‘ breaking with Stalinism , ’ but added that there was still a long way to go in ‘ overcoming Stalinist structures ’ .
27 The immediate political crisis had been averted , but there was still a long , long way to go before we could claim victory .
28 Already in November 1941 , the SD was reporting ‘ disappointment that the final smashing of Bolshevism is not taking place as rapidly as hoped and that no end of the eastern campaign is in sight ’ , a dampening of optimism at the news of the first falls of snow and the feeling that further advancement might be extremely difficult , puzzlement at the failure to advance further when the Russian troops were allegedly so poor and so badly equipped , concern at the reports of continued tough resistance of the Soviet army , and pessimism that ‘ the way to the Urals was still a long one , and the partisan war could still last a good while ’ .
29 When the Congregational Union officially urged this new course on the colleges in 1902 there was still a long way to go : A. M. Fairbairn warned Sir Alfred Dale , then Principal of University College , Liverpool , ‘ I think one has to be very careful as to giving the theological colleges power over the regulation of degrees .
30 Although I could see marriage appearing in the distance , it was still a long way off .
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