Example sentences of "[prep] [noun pl] [pron] had been [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | For ages he had been meaning to call in at a place down by the Elephant and Castle where they sold gramophone parts , but it was not until this morning that he had finally got around to it . |
| 2 | For months they had been trying with divets and tackle to hoist the appropriate two-ton stone upright and into its hole . |
| 3 | However , the FoE did welcome a number of proposals they had been campaigning on for some time . |
| 4 | Barbarossa 's initial aim was to unify Germany , and settle a number of conflicts which had been weakening the realm . |
| 5 | The final southbound working to run over the section from Dunford to Sheffield consisted of class 20 No. 20004 and a brake conveying a party of contractors who had been inspecting the remaining part of the route west of Penistone . |
| 6 | In any case , if Parson Woodforde 's manservant Ben Leggatt found himself temporarily ‘ out of pocket ’ , all he had to do was to pawn the best pair of trousers he had been wearing over the weekend and redeem them in time for church on Sunday . |
| 7 | She inherited from her brother a methodical and intelligent Treasurer , the Marquis of Winchester ; and she also took over the conclusions of committees which had been investigating the Crown 's finances under Edward VI . |
| 8 | The foundation of a national Board of Education signalled the acceptance within the official culture of a need for policies that would co-ordinate an efficient and fully national system of education , and also allowed the voices of dons who had been calling for a transformation of the traditional curriculum to carry more weight than ever before . |
| 9 | The broad effect of the Act was to enable societies to offer the extended range of services they had been lobbying for . |
| 10 | The court was told he had used cocaine and heroin and he also admitted that in addition to a cocktail of drugs he had been drinking heavily the evening before the incident . |
| 11 | He was a small boy of six who lived just around the corner from her , and for days he had been going on about this great talking parrot his father had given him . |
| 12 | ‘ For years we had been trying to lower and streamline the bonnets of front-engined cars and the mid-engined configuration allowed us to obtain an extremely low nose , deeply recessed between sculpted front wings that sloped down to the headlights , which were contained in a plexiglass fairing to continue the line . |
| 13 | Moreover the meaning is not at all the same as with to + infinitive , as can be seen from the sample sentences below : ( 39 ) For years she had been driving illegally with a licence obtained in Italy where her brother had sent the examiner a case of wine — not necessary , but she had felt bolstered . |
| 14 | Bob Mays had to confront the fact that for years he had been loving someone else 's daughter . |
| 15 | In desperation , the previous week , he had ordered the children to select a favourite passage from books he had been reading with them , write it out in their best handwriting and then add some comments on what they enjoyed about the piece and about the book in general . |
| 16 | Paramedics were at the scene in four minutes of the emergency call and took over from officers who had been trying to stem the flow of blood . |
| 17 | One matter to be discussed when the research administrators meet will be the Concorde trial 's demonstration that the level of CD4 white blood cells rose significantly in patients who had been receiving AZT , even though there was no subsequent clinical benefit . |
| 18 | Being let down by friends or a lack of public transport not only encouraged drink-driving , it also led young people to accept lifts from friends who had been drinking . |
| 19 | The Employment Department took the view that the TEC wrongly paid money to employers who had been running their own training schemes outside the Youth Training orbit ; this enabled the TEC to meet its government-imposed target of training weeks . |
| 20 | The Schuman Plan was based on ideas which had been circulating for some time but was devised in detail by Jean Monnet , who was in charge of France 's economic modernisation programme . |
| 21 | Jerry , above , split with the Rolling Stone earlier this year over claims he had been dating model Carla Bruni . |
| 22 | I think it must have been left by workmen who had been preparing the crypt for the disposal of some saintly relic or the body of a recently deceased priest . |