Sentence:  Both church and graveyard <WSD>were</WSD> smaller than she remembered them ( how many things had lessened while she was gone away ) but the headstones had grown so thick in thirty years that to find one named `` Dorothy Tredding '' seemed suddenly impossible . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)