Sentence examples for merely was from inspiring English sources
The phrase 'merely was' is correct and can be used in written English
You can use it to emphasize that something happened without any additional circumstances or details. For example: "He merely was, and then he was gone."
Not merely was he an outspoken Negro leader but — what was perhaps a matter of equal boldness in Georgia — an outspoken Republican.
They regarded the present as a temporary stage in history's unfolding, and the fantastic unrealizability of what was to be — pure Germanness, or the classless society — made what merely was something only to be destroyed or overcome.
Looking through Dr. Brenner's archives, Alex Gann, editor of the laboratory's publishing unit, recognized that they included Crick's missing correspondence, which evidently had not been discarded but merely was commingled with Dr. Brenner's papers.
Not merely was this plan approved before being presented in full to the Israeli public, but those involved refused to reveal it even after it had been published in foreign architectural magazines.
Not merely was this film bad enough to cause your brain matter to start leaking into your sinuses, but it may have played its own tiny, tiresome role in our island story.
But it is Edwards who will have to keep the team going, and when he used the word "inconvenience" in describing life on the Jets without Pennington, he merely was leafing through his little green book of aphorisms.
It is merely being human.
Others have merely been pelted with eggs.
It may merely be random variance.
Their economic dominance has merely been postponed.
