Example sentences of "have been [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Although intended to further curtail local government expenditure — by requiring authorities to meet any unforeseen expenditure from existing budgets — the effect may well have been to persuade local authorities to set high initial rates ( to provide adequate balances to meet unexpected contingencies or loss of income ) . |
| 2 | I know this because after my machine arrived , the salesman whose job it would have been to persuade me to buy it , had I not been too quick for him , came to see me anyway . |
| 3 | The sensible thing would have been to turn to someone , some sympathetic teacher , perhaps . |
| 4 | What a delight it must have been to watch express trains thundering up the bank at Arkwright bridge . |
| 5 | This , however , would have been to trivialize : the results would be of little interest . |
| 6 | Often many years elapsed before the village farmers built their new houses , however inconvenient it may have been to live in the centre of the parish and to farm on the boundaries . |
| 7 | To ask Rupert Murdoch what were his ‘ goals ’ would have been to pose probably rather a difficult question ( if the answer were serious ) . |
| 8 | Surely , the most effective denial of this satanic allegation would have been to allow the rituals of the higher degrees to be published in full . |
| 9 | It was not made public because that would have been to give warning to the culprit . ’ |
| 10 | One obvious alternative to the appointment of the Commissioner would have been to give further jurisdiction to the Industrial Tribunals , instead of the High Court , to enforce such rights which now fall within the scope of the Commissioner 's work . |
| 11 | Without actually opening it , which would have been to examine the beast physiologically , Hull inferred numerous relationships between levels of motivation ( drive ) and the extent of learning ( habit strength ) that rendered a response more or less probable . |
| 12 | She knew that now , had known it from the very first moment she had met him , however more comfortable it would have been to dismiss him as all brawn and no brain . |
| 13 | In all three cases the effect would have been to create merged units of a size able to compete with the many powerful US , European and Japanese companies now increasingly dominating the world scene ; for example , the Leyland/Bedford trucks merger provides a scale that neither could achieve on its own . |
| 14 | The effect of such a marriage , had it ever taken place , would have been to create a substantial English-dominated fief on France 's northern and eastern borders which would have been a northern equivalent of Aquitaine . |
| 15 | To have made such an equation would have been to create an idol : an item in the creation ( not this time a golden calf but a person ) would have been deified . |
| 16 | It is a tenable hypothesis that Bayezid II did indeed set a pattern and that many of the later foundations involving a joint muderris/muftilik were made simply in imitation of his precedent , though their effect might have been to create an official muftilik where none had existed before or to upgrade an existing muftilik ( which latter may well have been Bayezid II's intention in Amasya and Istanbul ) . |
| 17 | The sensible thing would have been to say that Crabb had been diving in the area to test out equipment and had got into difficulties , surfaced near the Russian ships and then drowned . |
| 18 | The honest answer would have been to say Fuck all , but Robert did not feel inclined to do so . |
| 19 | If you could imagine yourself being without the radio , T. V. , or telephone then you just might come close to imagining how difficult it must have been to spread or hand on the message of Christianity . |
| 20 | His normal reaction would have been to swing the car in a U-turn to return and tackle the driver of the tractor . |
| 21 | He does n't seem to have expressed a wish for a studio — that would have been to declare himself too soon , to stretch his confidence too far . |
| 22 | Given the arguments of the sceptics , such failures are only to be expected of course ; aiming to replace anxious intellectual despair with a calm peace of mind , the traditional Pyrrhonian response would have been to advocate suspension of judgement . |
| 23 | Among their justifications for the present move , Sotheby 's have stated that the average price of a lot sold at Sotheby 's is £1,000 which will result in an extra £50 on the bill ; that this is the first rise in the buyer 's premium since 1975 ; and that the alternative would have been to close down a number of the company 's European offices . |
| 24 | These , referred to in his diary , may just have been to illustrate special copies of other authors ' guide books . |
| 25 | A padlock was where the laces should have been to stop anyone taking them off when alone in the middle of the corridor . |
| 26 | The only way to keep the mine going would have been to spend perhaps £4 million on deeper tunnels plus new surface equipment . |
| 27 | For Freud , this would have been to replace one set of dogmatic assertions with another set , held by the believers to be for ever true , and providing a sense of false security for them . |
| 28 | I had a fleeting thought of what fun it would have been to do this trip with Rosemary . |
| 29 | The best approach would have been to do the more straightforward bits first and to spend only the allocated time — 36 minutes — and no longer . |
| 30 | The easiest option for both district and area administrators would have been to do nothing until after the reorganization had taken place . |