Example sentences of "[be] not so [adv] a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | This has been not so much a question of exegesis but of hermeneutics , searching for the underlying meaning and background to the understanding and belief in the demonic world ( see Carr 1981 ) . |
| 2 | ‘ Well , I 'm not so much a guitarist ; I 'm more of a listener — still . |
| 3 | In some variants of reported speech where the speaker is only implicitly identified , the words may be not so much a straight transformation of what was said as a summary or paraphrase of it . |
| 4 | In Britain the railways began in the 1800s , in Germany in the 1840s , but in invisible Poland the railways were not so much a network as the far flung provincial extensions of three distant empires . |
| 5 | This is where the spectacular forms of regeneration that characterised the 1980s ( Harvey , 1989 ) were not so much a postmodern discontinuity as a logical extension of the tradition of symbolically rich , effectively marginal , policy palliatives that were offered to the urban crisis from the 1960s onwards . |
| 6 | Jaromil is not so much a character as a type , and is not unlike the Shelleyan poet in Shaw 's Candida , Eugene Marchbanks . |
| 7 | Equally regrettably , they suggest that she who ( presumably ) approved them is not so much a Pharisee as a Philistine : one , moreover , who has been impressed by too many drives down The Bishop 's Avenue , where Hampstead 's temples to new money are built , en route to the Finchley constituency . |
| 8 | But , as the editor Andre Fontaine explains : ‘ It is not so much a new layout as a new presentation . |
| 9 | ‘ Prince ’ is not so much a person as a persona , a space , in which he can become anything he or we want him to be . |
| 10 | It is not so much a failure of one or other particular party , it is a failure of our culture to recognize the significance and importance of science and to elevate it within the nation more continuously and more substantially than governments of either party have chosen to do during the past 25 years . |
| 11 | This is not so much a matter of transaction costs as of the unpredictability of offer and counter-offer : it moves economics into the realm of game theory , where efficient outcomes can not be taken for granted ( see box ) . |
| 12 | The degree of risk created by the bad driving should be regarded as the crucial factor ; it is not so much a question of whether the sentence should be more severe when the risk eventuates , as whether the sentence should be more lenient when the risk does not materialize . |
| 13 | That word ‘ supposed ’ may anger Jewish readers , but Yad Vashem is not so much a memorial as a political statement . |
| 14 | Here one suspects that there is not so much a clash of ideology as one of gross distortion . |
| 15 | The real problem here , because of the nature of the legal framework , is not so much a legal one as one of evidence . |
| 16 | It is not so much a problem of hardware development outpacing software , or vice versa . |
| 17 | Scholars of Confucianism are agreed that it is not so much a religion as a guide to a system of political organisation , and as time went on , it too fell victim to divisions and disputes . |
| 18 | John Clare testifies to the wholesale obliteration of landmarks , and the subsequent consciousness of alienation ; The Female Vagrant is not so much a poem by Wordsworth as a case-history . |
| 19 | However , Ms Callil says that overall it is not so much a question of bigger profits , as ‘ less loss ’ . |
| 20 | Indeed , I think that the onslaught of modern consumerism is not so much a slavish addiction to fashion as a capitulation to hedonism . |
| 21 | Although their sentiments sound very pious as they earnestly cry , ‘ Lord , send revival ’ , what they are in fact engaged in is not so much a prayer meeting as a spiritual buck-passing session . |
| 22 | What we need is not so much a point irregularity such as a foreign atom , because that could only facilitate movement at one point , but rather a line defect which will allow the army of molecules , as it were , to sweep forward on a broad front . |
| 23 | Gluing is not so much a skilled job as a responsible one and a large number of mistakes are available to a determined man , all of which can have dangerous results . |
| 24 | BRIAN Johnston is not so much a ball-by-ball cricket commentator , more a national institution . |
| 25 | It is not so much a matter of deciding in advance which activities and what kinds of adult input match the child 's level of development , either in terms of language or cognitive abilities ; rather , it is a matter of the adult being sensitive to the child 's changing communicative needs and adjusting her speech and actions from one moment to the next . |
| 26 | It is not so much a matter of praying together ( good though that is ) , but of being one in purpose and spirit . |
| 27 | The phrase ‘ innocent women and children ’ is not so much a slur on men as a way of infantilising women — classing them , with children , as helpless and passive victims incapable of political agency or moral judgement . |
| 28 | To criticise language for being ‘ misleading ’ as to the state of affairs in the real world is to tilt at windmills , because language is not so much a limpid pool through which we are to glimpse the truth as a muddy pond full of the debris of history and ideology . |
| 29 | ‘ She is not so much a stargazer as someone who is interested in power — other people 's power , which is possibly the only reason she was attracted to David Mellor . |
| 30 | Indeed , it is not so much a case of them accompanying the AIB team members as of them being part of the team . |