Writing is not merely, or even foremost, a matter of self-expression.
A pardon does not merely, or even usually, mean letting someone convicted of a crime go free; it can also mean commuting a sentence.
In the Anthony trial a system that worked almost too well met a cast of characters almost too bad to be believed, and that's true not merely, or even mainly, of the Anthonys.
Scholem, a religious but unorthodox Jew, defended tradition in terms that sound not merely unfashionable but even sinister, especially to post-September 11th ears.
We catch Hoffman's expression, with the wind howling by, and the madness that grips it is not merely invincible but, even at this altitude, amused.
Such a game is not merely consumed, or even played.
"Such a game is not merely consumed, or even played," wrote Seth Schiesel of the massive multiplayer game in The Times.
But it also depicts the world that was an inextricable part of the rise of that genius, not merely — perhaps not even primarily — in the broader political circumstances that Firestone confronted but in the styles and the moods of the time.
Yet the compliment is not merely inverted, since even freakish mastery of such tricks does not account for those impalpable gifts — the tremor of presence on the page, the overflow of vitality — which rival the abundance, even gratuitousness, of nature itself.
This is not merely - or even mostly - because Bosnia, Iran and Nigeria are not the most daunting of opponents.
