In France, amusement is regarded almost as badly as commercial success.
Among people who know automobile racing well, a good race-car mechanic is regarded almost as highly as a championship driver.
James Sinclair, who manages the development, said: "The sycamore is not a tree of great importance or rarity and to a large extent is regarded almost as a weed".
As a habitat, it suited Dangin, whose presence in the industry — shadowy as, by necessity, it is — is regarded almost mythologically.
He described One River as a "600-page love letter to Colombia", where, unsurprisingly, he is regarded almost as a national hero.
People tell me that Big Deal helped to make poker respectable in Britain, where the game had hitherto been regarded almost exclusively as a seedy offshoot of East End, sub-Kray gangsterdom.
In a country where tax evasion is regarded almost as a national sport, they often find that the owners of expensive boats have declared trifling amounts of income, or none at all.
What ministers really mean when they say they are putting students "at the heart of the system" (where they have always been) is that students are to be regarded almost exclusively as consumers who are purchasing their higher education.
One of the great excitements of visiting Caltech, where Stephen was a Fairchild scholar in 1975, was meeting the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman, who was regarded almost like a god there.
Being constantly observant about threats and dangers also feels alien, social researchers say, in a society in which -- unlike in many parts of the world -- personal safety has been regarded almost as an assumption by much of the population.
In some quarters he was regarded almost as a messiah – the man who had come back into the fold, after 10 years in US private healthcare, to rescue the NHS from its crisis of unsustainability.
