Example sentences of "[was/were] able [verb] [pron] [noun] to " in BNC.
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| 1 | This pattern dated originally from the Middle Ages when the towns were able to purchase their right to self-government by paying an impecunious Crown for a charter . |
| 2 | We acquired the shares without any hassle and were able to devote our energies to reorganising the business . ’ |
| 3 | They were in touch with the main currents of European political and cultural life and were able to send their sons to universities such as Göttingen , Tübingen , Vienna and the Sorbonne . |
| 4 | ‘ We negotiated with her owners and were able to secure her movement to Ardrossan . |
| 5 | He became a suspect for the double rape because he was the goalkeeper for a local amateur soccer team and police were able to match his footprints to those found on a floor in his victim 's house . |
| 6 | By then he was breathing so strongly and normally that she was able to extend her consciousness to details , every one of which was stunningly unexpected and astonishing , even the flickering yellow eye of the torch still beaming upon the recumbent body . |
| 7 | He was able to extend his law to cubic and biquadratic residues , but to state his results elegantly he found it helpful to introduce numbers of the form a + pb and a + ib respectively where a , b are integers , p is a complex cube root of unity and , of course , i is the usual square root of -1 . |
| 8 | She had courage , and with the help of her union was able to take her employers to court . |
| 9 | As an extempore speaker he was able to tailor his words to his audience 's reactions and so convey the impression of personal conversation even when addressing thousands . |
| 10 | By securing the support of the head teacher and staff of a different mainstream school she was able to place her opposition to a recommendation for residential schooling on a firm footing and insist that her understanding of Tom 's needs be tested in practice . |
| 11 | Malcolm and Wheeler-Bennett , then in his early twenties , shared a passionate interest in international relations , and Malcolm , as a distinguished senior officer , was able to lend his weight to the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House , of which he and Wheeler-Bennett were founder-members . |
| 12 | John was familiar with his ‘ place ’ , as miners called the section of the pit in which they worked , and even in the dark was able to find his way to where a small stream of water leaked from the rock . |
| 13 | At first I found the ceremonial rather strange , but once I realised the significance of the ceremony and ritual I appreciated the service to the full and was able to add my services to the whole — as each member of the congregation can take a very definite part in the service if he or she has the will , and knows what is meant by the different ceremonies performed . |
| 14 | Kendall was able to check his results to an extent , since much of his data related to villages whose location was known , and this gave him some confidence in suggesting the locations of the lost villages . |