Example sentences of "[was/were] [pron] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | They were hardly his own yet sprang from his heart as though , in those exalted moments , it were itself a living vessel of the Christmas mystery . |
| 2 | Were you a real rock pig on that tour ? |
| 3 | ‘ Were you a good parlourmaid , Sally-Anne ? ’ he enquired gently . |
| 4 | Were you a good girl ? |
| 5 | ‘ Were you a rowan last time ? |
| 6 | So how many years were you a French polisher then ? |
| 7 | Nor , obviously , were they a simple expression of Indian resistance to this assault . |
| 8 | Erm I w I was going to say , going back to China , erm they 're a bit frightened of China now in , in what was the Soviet Union I heard the other day , were th were they a little bit anti China 's type of communism before er the Soviet Union fell or were they all , all pals together ? |
| 9 | 2 Within the system of government , the increased numbers of bureaucrats and officials involved in welfare and public-service provision were themselves a powerful lobby for more state activity . |
| 10 | This is a crucial stage of development from that in which — in the earlier stages substantially , in the later stages residually — artists were themselves a specific form of social organization . |
| 11 | In addition the closeness of the alliance and the sheer multiplicity of contacts were themselves a major cause of ill-feeling — as in a family . |
| 12 | ‘ Was I a naughty girl to ask for champagne ? ’ she enquired , certain in the knowledge that children 's misdemeanours are not usually regarded seriously . |
| 13 | The author of The Jovial Cutlers , Joseph Mather , was himself a working cutler and he wrote for an audience of his fellows . |
| 14 | By this stage too , the young king , who was himself a committed Protestant , was beginning to exert his own personal influence . |
| 15 | Lambert was himself a skilled administrator , with a working knowledge of sanitary reform . |
| 16 | Frederick was himself a major figure in trade with the Peninsula and Herne succeeded him as head of their joint firm in 1685 . |
| 17 | Edward Jenner was himself a keen inoculator , but he was impressed by the apparently safer prophylactic effects of the mild natural disease of cowpox ; a zoonosis often caught by milkmaids which apparently protected them from smallpox , as he demonstrated in his paper of 1798 . |
| 18 | Matters were made worse by the fact that Ruiz-Giménez was himself a practising Catholic and had , on appointment , sworn allegiance to the principles of the Francoist Movement , while Laín and Tovar were both erstwhile Falangists . |
| 19 | Miloš was himself a rich man , with large estates in Wallachia as well as his Serbian lands . |
| 20 | One of his main claims was that MI5 had been fully penetrated by Russian intelligence which led to the allegations that Roger Hollis was himself a Russian mole . |
| 21 | The lure of live music-making is , of course , irresistible : the sense of occasion , of which Karajan was himself a great provider , the throng of music-madded fans and aficionados , not to mention that bear-baiting element Glenn Gould was always so amusing about , as soloists are led out and put to their instruments before the attentive crowd . |
| 22 | She stayed in work until she was 29 walking out for five years with her fiance , an engineer 's blacksmith who was himself a great reader , while they saved up to marry . |
| 23 | Mozart 's librettist for Figaro was himself a controversial and colourful character . |
| 24 | He revisits his birthplace in Port Talbot , where he was the son of a fiery Welsh baker who was himself a frustrated actor . |
| 25 | He was the kindest , most generous of men , and spread great happiness ( Jane had only to think of him to cheer herself up ) — but was himself a tragic figure , tied to a wife he did not love . |
| 26 | Titmuss was funded by the Eugenics Society as Secretary of the Population Investigation Committee and was himself a leading member of the society . |
| 27 | Nevertheless Tolkien was himself a Christian , and he faced a problem in the ‘ theory of courage ’ he so much admired : its mainspring is despair , its spirit often heathen ferocity . |
| 28 | Seth was himself a charming drug-addicted , dope-dealing , pimping , strip-show barker who found what looked like salvation and wrote the novel that won him acclaim and rebirth . |
| 29 | In 1672 Haines obtained a patent for a new method of cleaning trefoil so as to improve the seed , and this led to public controversy with Caffyn , who was himself a local farmer , jealous of Haines 's influence with local notables , and convinced that patents were unchristian and patentees covetous . |
| 30 | The economic and constitutional rights of the republics , at the same time , should be increased and defined more precisely ; but any changes of this kind must take account of the fact that each of the republics was itself a multinational state in which the interests of all national groups must be properly respected . |