Sentence:  When he had left , I could never remember whether he had poked them in their middles , laughingly , with a thick index finger or whether he <WSD>was</WSD> merely so much the sort of person who did this that one assumed the action , not bothering to look . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)