Example sentences of "[was/were] [pron] a [adj] [noun] " in BNC.

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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 girl ?
4 Were you a good parlourmaid , Sally-Anne ? ’ he enquired gently .
5 So how many years were you a French polisher then ?
6 Nor , obviously , were they a simple expression of Indian resistance to this assault .
7 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 ?
8 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 .
9 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 .
10 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 .
11 Was I a naughty girl to ask for champagne ? ’ she enquired , certain in the knowledge that children 's misdemeanours are not usually regarded seriously .
12 The author of The Jovial Cutlers , Joseph Mather , was himself a working cutler and he wrote for an audience of his fellows .
13 By this stage too , the young king , who was himself a committed Protestant , was beginning to exert his own personal influence .
14 Lambert was himself a skilled administrator , with a working knowledge of sanitary reform .
15 Frederick was himself a major figure in trade with the Peninsula and Herne succeeded him as head of their joint firm in 1685 .
16 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 .
17 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 .
18 Miloš was himself a rich man , with large estates in Wallachia as well as his Serbian lands .
19 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 .
20 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 .
21 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 .
22 He revisits his birthplace in Port Talbot , where he was the son of a fiery Welsh baker who was himself a frustrated actor .
23 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 .
24 Titmuss was funded by the Eugenics Society as Secretary of the Population Investigation Committee and was himself a leading member of the society .
25 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 .
26 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 .
27 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 .
28 That did not mean much , since Kursk was itself a drowsy centre with almost no factories and only the main railway line from Moscow to enliven it .
29 The sheer pace of accumulation was itself a mixed blessing .
30 However , the collapse in the birth rate from its peak in the mid 1960s , which was primarily responsible for this , was itself a major event with long-term implications .
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