were sentencing

• past progressive

  past progressive

  Used to describe an ongoing action or continuous state that was happening at a specific time in the past.

  of sentence.
  sentence

  noun

  a grammatical unit of one or more words that expresses an independent statement, question, request, command, exclamation, etc., and that typically has a subject as well as a predicate, as in John is here. or Is John here? In print or writing, a sentence typically begins with a capital letter and ends with appropriate punctuation; in speech it displays recognizable, communicative intonation patterns and is often marked by preceding and following pauses.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

were sentencing

However, it rapidly became clear that the courts were sentencing thousands of offenders to IPPs - some with minimum terms as low as 10-18 months.

From BBC ● Jan. 5, 2018

I was prosecuting cases before there were sentencing guidelines.”

From Washington Post ● Dec. 5, 2015

“Telling someone that college is not right for him seems harsh and classist, vaguely Dickensian,” Professor X writes, “as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines.”

From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2011

You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged before sundown.

From Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man by Marie Conway Oemler

The words sounded in her own ears as if she were sentencing herself to leave heaven.

From Mrs. Day's Daughters by Mary E. Mann

Related Words

• censure
• decision
• edict
• judgment
• order
• penalty
• punishment
• ruling
• term
• verdict