Example sentences of "[noun] [verb] been a [adj] [conj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Oral contraceptives have been a common and important cause of secondary hypertension , which may become irreversible and occasionally lethal . |
| 2 | De Valera was continuing the now dominant culture recognized by Eoin MacNeill and Douglas Hyde when , in his St Patrick 's Day address to the United States of America , broadcast in 1935 , he underlined the spirit of that preamble : ‘ Since the coming of St. Patrick , fifteen hundred years ago , Ireland has been a Christian and a Catholic nation . |
| 3 | The problem of accommodating inconsistent , if not incompatible GUIs has been a persistent and nagging thorn in the side of industry standards organisations — UI , X/Open Co Ltd and IEEE alike . |
| 4 | The ascent of Arsenio Hall has been a low but steady one . |
| 5 | At one time , the Order of True Valiance had been a strong and powerful body of men , slaves to no one and nothing . |
| 6 | The advent of Edna into the household had been a miraculous and totally unexpected blessing , if such a word could be applied to what had become a devastating situation . |
| 7 | Tom Reynolds had been a loyal and useful ally but now his usefulness was almost at an end . |
| 8 | Perhaps one of the most important developments of the last few years has been a steady but widespread trend towards protectionism . |
| 9 | The monarchy in Cyrene had been a splendid and successful anachronism ; the ‘ democracy ’ which ousted it ( Arist. loc.cit. ) made no such splash in the world beyond Africa . |
| 10 | November had been a damp and drizzly month , bringing shorter days and causing aggravation to those people who found it increasingly difficult to travel in the blackout . |
| 11 | This was no anti-war , limp-wristed liberal telling the American people that the Vietnam War had been a colossal and ghastly waste of life and money . |
| 12 | A stress on responsibilities as well as rights has been a significant and long-standing feature of the British culture and has been well imbued by a large part of the nation 's political elite . |
| 13 | Despite what had happened between them , because it had been what she had wanted at the time and because Rune had been a generous and not over-demanding lover , and because she loved him , her own sense of self-esteem had remained whole . |
| 14 | In certain areas of the country industrialization had been a slow but continuous process since the seventeenth century or even earlier ; and it is a process which has not finished yet . |
| 15 | And yet , it is said the Rochesters have been a violent than a quiet race in their time , perhaps though , that is the reason they rest tranq tranquilly in their graves now . |
| 16 | The relationship between content and style has been a constant and controversial preoccupation of literary critics . |
| 17 | How such behaviours have evolved in the face of selection favouring the maximization of individual reproduction has been a great and tantalizing mystery to evolutionary theorists . |
| 18 | She 'd been so relieved at the news of Liz and Owen 's removal from Intensive Care that seeing the other girl 's still , slight figure lying motionless on the hospital bed had been a deep and severe shock . |
| 19 | Restoring the balance between prevention , cure and care has been a major or minor theme of health policy ever since . |
| 20 | For Philip , the encounter has been a bizarre and disturbing diversion from his ordinary world . |
| 21 | Though Mr Pinter has been a loyal and vociferous supporter of Mr Kinnock he sometimes needs to be cajoled . |
| 22 | The Judge , Mrs Justice Ebsworth sentenced Bailey to life imprisonment saying : ’ The events leading to the killing had been a brutal and arrogant series of acts . ’ |
| 23 | By now , the negotiations had been a long and tedious process . |
| 24 | Though she told her husband ‘ shrewdly and shortly ’ that she thought she had married beneath her , he proved on the whole a sympathetic and supportive husband in what can not by any standards have been a normal or comfortable married life . |
| 25 | In the sciences of course the possibility of pure objectivity has been a convenient and fruitful assumption , which has only recently run up against its limitations . |
| 26 | The role of symbol had been a necessary and successful one for de Gaulle up to this point , but it now became much more problematic . |
| 27 | Being the sinless character that I am , my quest for a sin has been a long and arduous task ( which started five minutes ago ) . |
| 28 | The pay of employees has been a traditional and frequent object of intervention , as have a wide range of other industrial relations issues such as closure and redundancy , working practices and dispute settlement . |
| 29 | Hip dysplasia in breeds such as Retrievers and German Shepherds has been a weighty and controversial subject for decades . |
| 30 | The Evergreens had been a large and comfortably rustic dwelling , too big and rambling to be a house but too small and unpretentious to be a mansion . |