Example sentences of "been [art] [adj] [conj] a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Otherwise you may aggravate something that , with a little rest and good management , could have been no more than a minor injury . |
| 2 | It had not occurred to us that this ranging survey of the idioms of English and incidentally French verse had been no more than a ‘ prologue ’ — and to what , for heaven 's sake ? |
| 3 | But what had been no more than a slowly moving stream less than a couple of metres wide now flowed fast and dark with mud across the full thirty metres of the riverbed . |
| 4 | Continuing his tour of crowned heads , Napoleon III went from Stuttgart to Weimar , where he met Franz-Joseph of Austria , but the encounter seems to have been no more than a routine courtesy call between sovereigns and the fact that it did not even take place in Vienna underlined the private nature of the meeting . |
| 5 | The two year ban which he received has been no more than a minor inconvenience to him . |
| 6 | Or it may have been no more than a ruse to exert pressure and force him to reconsider . |
| 7 | When she 'd moved in , it had been no more than a yard full of builders ' rubbish . |
| 8 | On this occasion congress exercised its constitutional right to declare war , but , in retrospect , this seems to have been no more than a case of going through the motions — the age of crisis was well underway and the constitutional balance of powers would never be the same again . |
| 9 | Though Mosley was represented to future generations as if he had been no more than a gutter politician and demagogue , the truth was that he had first attracted sympathy — if not support from many political figures who were subsequently to disown him . |
| 10 | This done it soon became clear that Clairvaux had been no more than a pretext and that the real problems lay elsewhere . |
| 11 | Of course , this might have been no more than a diplomatic ruse by the Russians to initiate a dependence which would permit a later imposition of heavier tribute payments without negative results . |
| 12 | The account is and has been no more than a conduit , the defendant holding its funds with a Scottish bank in Glasgow . |
| 13 | Superficially such a resolution might appear to have been no more than a minimum concession by the Federation in response to the seamen 's involvement in a wave of strikes by transport workers which had reverberated around the ports of Britain in the previous summer — an undertaking that it would withdraw its " ticket " if the union would do the same , so that neither side would attempt to control the supply of seamen and free labour disputes would cease . |
| 14 | Burun guessed that Kiku had been no more than a hair's-breadth away from being impaled on the st'lyan 's gilden horn . |
| 15 | In his last memoirs , written in his second exile , he wrote that before 1953 , " I had been no more than a hereditary sovereign , but now I had truly been elected by the people . |
| 16 | On waking , it occurred to her with renewed conviction that the experience of two days before might have been no more than a temporary aberration of an exhausted mind . |
| 17 | Perhaps Piers had been no more than a struggling architect when they had first met , and she had not been content to lead a life of poverty . |
| 18 | What this would have looked like is sometimes difficult to imagine — it may have been no more than a larger-than-average farmstead , or it may have been a palace such as those found at Yeavering and Cheddar . |
| 19 | Historically , resource allocation has been the prime objective ( eg in relation to fisheries ) and environmental protection has been no more than a secondary objective . |
| 20 | To begin with , only the coincidence of the deaths of father and son within four days of each other ; beyond that his notion of a connection had been no more than a hunch , and he had been in the business too long to back his hunches far ahead of evidence . |
| 21 | Subsequently what had been no more than a name implying a certain diplomatic affiliation between the Franks and Valentinian must have been interpreted as providing a genuine indication of the origins of the Franks . |
| 22 | The US ambassador , who had marvelled at the readiness of the British to hazard so much in company with France ( a nation which they were in the habit of disparaging ) , now saw that this had been no more than a passing flirtation . |
| 23 | To Willi and Gerda she had been no more than a romantic inspiration , a cardboard figure of tinsel who ceased to exist when the curtain came down . |
| 24 | In fact , the entire evening , spent flirting and dancing with her , had probably been no more than a cynical exercise in keeping his mind off someone else . |
| 25 | If she felt hurt at the realisation that his affectionate gestures had been no more than a front — well , it could only be because her ego was wounded . |
| 26 | For her , their lovemaking might have been an almost mystical fusing of bodies and identities , yet for him it had been no more than a roll in the hay . |
| 27 | This suggests that the fall in equity prices in October 1987 may have been no more than a correction to the market . |
| 28 | The pulse-receiver would have been no larger than a matchbox , probably receiving on something like 72.15 megahertz a signal sent from a small transmitter . |
| 29 | Although he differentiated his position from that of Draper , suggesting that the struggle had been between science and dogmatic theology rather than between science and religion , A. D. White insisted that there had been a theological and a scientific view of every question , invariably at odds . |
| 30 | And yet , it is said the Rochesters have been a violent than a quiet race in their time , perhaps though , that is the reason they rest tranq tranquilly in their graves now . |