Example sentences of "[prep] [subord] by a [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Somehow sensing this connection , clerics have been drawn as if by a magnet to the rails . |
| 2 | The Allies seemed to be drawn as if by a magnet to our local villages . |
| 3 | Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker , impress us with the illusion of design and planning . |
| 4 | as if by a flash of lightning , I awoke as if struck by lightning ; this time again I spent the rest of the night working out the consequences . |
| 5 | But as quickly as his arm had gone out , it returned to his side , jerked back there as if by a spring ; and he noticed that his action had n't gone unnoticed by Mick . |
| 6 | Before his death , the Dragoons visited the farm ; they searched all of the outbuildings and then the house but , as if by a miracle , they failed to enter the room in which ‘ The Prophet ’ lay dying . |
| 7 | The Vietminh had seemed to bring it off as if by a miracle . |
| 8 | Eventually we saw a figure coming slowly towards us , clearly visible because the sky , as if by a miracle , had started to clear and a brilliant moon had appeared . |
| 9 | The ranks parted and , as if by a miracle , Lindsey saw Niall , on his knees , bending over the man spreadeagled face-down on the floor . |
| 10 | As I write , I can think of a couple of billboard posters that make no attempt to conceal their debt to the Belgian fantasist : a Silk Cut advertisement , which discards the regular purple silk motif in favour of a neutral cream back ground on which are set the letters P U R P L and E , snipped from some newspaper 's headlines as if by a poison pen writer ; and another whose legend , ‘ I did n't know that Air France had more flights to Paris than any other airline company ’ , is illustrated by the portrait of a man whose face is obscured by a fried egg . |
| 11 | Looking more like a bewildered Old English sheepdog than a thwarted child-molester , he throws himself around the place , lying on his back and waggling his feet in the air , as if by an excess of physical effort he could make up for the thinness of the script . |
| 12 | For a brief moment she tried to summon up some form of resistance , as if by an effort of will she could deny her immediate instinctive reaction to his dark enchantment . |