Example sentences of "[was/were] a [noun sg] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | They claim the expulsions were a cover-up bid after they tried to expose a slush fund run by crooked officials . |
| 2 | To claim that Britain has nurtured something in a matter ultimately pertaining to worship ( the choral singing of cathedral and chapel ) which is purified and controlled beyond anything possessed by Catholic Europe , which is purged of excessive artifice and rhetoric ( Continental reviewers consistently find English a cappella performances impassive ) and whose excellence gives Britain a mission these are among the ideas that have been the principal source of British national identity since the Act of Union in 1707 and were a foundation stone of English identity long before . |
| 3 | Of course , if you were a Vogue reader with a purse to match , you would have been urged to visit such places in the 1970s , but where the rich ( or adventurous ) manage to travel independently , the package holiday-maker reaches a decade later and , just as Thomas Cook had envisaged , the inclusive tour enables more people to travel to far-flung destinations . |
| 4 | Far from being impossibly Utopian , these attitudes were a survival necessity and eventually flowered into the extraordinarily peaceful and creative Minoan civilisation of ancient Crete . |
| 5 | I was so impressed with this program , I only wish I were a gardening enthusiast , so I could put root directory through it paces . |
| 6 | The morning rehearsals each day were a Tiller rule not demanded by the management and so were not paid for . |
| 7 | People have talked a bit about their children and er and , and how beautiful they are , supposing you were a fairy god mother and you were at a christening and you had a wand and you could endow one gift , would it be beauty ? , is beauty the most important gift ? , button one for yes and button two for no and I 'd love to go round the world and ask this question , but out of one hundred Scottish women seven of you say yes , but ninety three of you think there is a more important gift than beauty and what that might be we shall talk about another time , but for all thank you now , thank you for watching , good bye |
| 8 | ‘ And you were a nominee shareholder and director . ’ |
| 9 | ‘ Now you know how I felt every time I saw you with Adam , hugging him to you as if you were a bosom friend . |
| 10 | When colleges of education in the 1960s were clamouring to employ Brian Way as their external examiner and his children 's theatre companies were a household name throughout the country 's education authorities , Dorothy Heathcote was relatively unknown in spite of having held her university post since the early 1950s . |
| 11 | ‘ From the moment they told me that you were a breech baby I knew I 'd have trouble with you . ’ |
| 12 | Within the package were a country park , leisure centre , swimming pool , schools and health care — all thrown in . |
| 13 | Lady Grubb had fallen easily into the habit of behaving to her children as if she were some doggedly snobbish godmother , inviting them home every few months to look into their marriage prospects and treating the occasion as if it were a country weekend that put her to a lot of trouble , though her house was actually in the middle of London and fully staffed with unhappy au-pair girls . |
| 14 | She quoted an education lecturer , " if Risinghill were a country place , the natural conditions of rural life would throw the teacher into the community , but in London social conditions do not do this ; unless you see it as a need , you would go along quite happily thinking the community is not part of your job " ( Berg 1968:273 ) . |
| 15 | The stakes were a crocodile briefcase … |
| 16 | The new principle of a two-thirds majority of those present , as it were a head count — without discriminating between them as to worth , age and weightiness — was undoubtedly responsible for Lothar 's election . |
| 17 | ‘ It were a karaoke machine . ’ |
| 18 | Like many I would draw the line if it were a water closet frequented by the public , but prison is not a place for such offenders . |
| 19 | Motivated by lust you were a walking stick of dynamite . ’ |
| 20 | The only thing that I noticed which would annoy me if I were a glider pilot was that , engine off , the propeller does have a habit of rotating slightly . |
| 21 | We still thought the ATS were a wartime phenomenon . |
| 22 | ‘ You mugs would n't know how to treat me straight if I were a twelve-inch ruler . ’ |
| 23 | Segs & such click-clack devices were a suedehead craze — causing delays and disappointment ( for many ) at dance hall entrances as bouncers checked shoe-soles & turned away dance-floor destructive over-metallised examples . |
| 24 | Willi had , somehow , over the years , forced everyone into the custom of dressing as though it were a State ball instead of a private dinner party in a prosperous farmhouse . |
| 25 | Indeed , why is so much that is trivial in organizations treated as though it were a state secret ? |
| 26 | The United States had the same sort of missiles in Italy and in Turkey and , before this crisis had developed , President Kennedy had in fact ordered them er to be er er returned to the United States , these missiles had no strategic purpose at all because a major change that had come into the strategic equation was the arrival of the intercontinental ballistic missile , and it was these missiles , really , which held the strategic balance er and were to change in fact radically both international politics and global strategy over the years to come , but I 'm going to talk about that later , the point I 'm making here is that er Khrushchev claimed that the missiles were there in the event of an American assault on Cuba , they were a deterrent weapon in exactly the same way as the defensive deterrent weapons er were d were defensive er for er the United States and for the Soviet Union . |
| 27 | The United States had the same sort of missiles in Italy and in Turkey and , before this crisis had developed , President Kennedy had in fact ordered them er to be er er returned to the United States , these missiles had no strategic purpose at all because a major change that had come into the strategic equation was the arrival of the intercontinental ballistic missile , and it was these missiles , really , which held the strategic balance er and were to change in fact radically both international politics and global strategy over the years to come , but I 'm going to talk about that later , the point I 'm making here is that er Khrushchev claimed that the missiles were there in the event of an American assault on Cuba , they were a deterrent weapon in exactly the same way as the defensive deterrent weapons er were d were defensive er for er the United States and for the Soviet Union . |
| 28 | The three passengers were a company director , Trevor Balmforth , 60 ; John Greenwood , 46 , a builder ; and Iain Shaw , 53 , a fishmonger . |
| 29 | Wearing a baggy green cap and showing not the slightest tension , Latif went for his strokes as if it were a charity match . |
| 30 | And he were a taxi driver and he 'd got lost . |