Example sentences of "[adj] [noun] had [been] [v-ing] for " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | She calmly told me that the police had called round and that Nassim had been looking for me . |
| 2 | The City and the Confederation of British Industry had been looking for some indication of earlier participation in the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS . |
| 3 | Mr Wolski knew already that the old eagle had been ailing for months now and that three weeks ago they had finally taken her out of her cage and into the veterinary block to see if there was anything they could do for her . |
| 4 | The new aspect which foreign policy had been acquiring for two or three decades had suddenly grown to startling dimensions . |
| 5 | While John Paul Jones had been captivating the ladies of Paris the French government had been preparing for the most serious attack on England since the Dutch incursion into the Medway . |
| 6 | The embattled Chancellor had been hoping for a public show of loyalty from the Prime Minister . |
| 7 | For a long time the industrious Bavarians had been preparing for such an attack . |
| 8 | Several of the Board 's leading civil servants had been pressing for more equality in provision . |
| 9 | The ruling Liberal Democratic Party had been looking for an excuse to reward its friends in the building industry for their financial support . |
| 10 | The US and North Korean governments had been communicating for several years at a low level through the US embassy in Beijing . |
| 11 | Below them , a large group of human subjects had been circling for hours around a roller rink set among the trees . |
| 12 | It was as if a sick national organism had been waiting for the right , suitably appalling , symptom to erupt into general protest at its fate . |
| 13 | Many of these children had been attending for a long time , so they already knew many things , specially the important things like how to stand in line and what to do when your pen-nib broke . |
| 14 | At last the government recognised what many researchers had been saying for years : that corporal punishment did not address the causes of bad behaviour , caused resentment among older pupils in particular , and was ‘ inimical to the quality of relationships between teachers and pupils upon which good behaviour is based ’ . |
| 15 | In 1984–5 , most of the courses in all institutions had been running for less than five years , though about a third of courses in Colleges , including nearly half the B Ed Primary courses had been operating in the way described for more than five years . |
| 16 | His best guess was that the reference was to Nerys , that his unconscious mind had been looking for comfort in the prospect that Wayne would at least be with his mother , in which case he decided that there was probably some hope for his mental state after all . |
| 17 | The ancient Egyptians had been trying for centuries to prevent the export of their sacred felines . |
| 18 | In practice Anglo-American co-operation had been increasing for some years , but this was now expanded . |
| 19 | This was the tonic which the nuclear industry had been waiting for — a government which was both strongly sympathetic to its point of view , and prepared to make firm decisions . |
| 20 | After all , the National Association of Labour Teachers had been pressing for Common Schools since 1930 . |
| 21 | The big fish had been making for deep water all afternoon and Trent had n't seen a bird for the past hour . |
| 22 | The Moslems , supporters of the Democratic Action Party ( based in Bosnia-Hercegovina ) , were protesting at what they claimed to be repression of the rights of Moslems in the Sanjak and Serbian efforts to drive them out ( Sanjak Moslem militants had been agitating for autonomy and closer links with Bosnia-Hercegovina , where Moslems were the largest national group ) . |
| 23 | The Young King had been pressing for permission to go on a pilgrimage to Compostella but Henry II , believing that this was just an excuse to get away from his watchful eye , had instead ordered him to help suppress the rebellion in Aquitaine . |
| 24 | My hon. Friend may remember that , in 1980 , a quarter of a million people had been waiting for more than two months for telephones to be connected . |
| 25 | Certainly Terry , Brian and I knew that close friends had been campaigning for us and that that experience could have changed them , just as we 'd been changed by what we had gone through . |
| 26 | Yet it was just here that friction and innovation entered , for since the eleventh century church theorists — theologians and particularly canon lawyers — and successive popes had been claiming for the clergy immunities and privileges quite distinct from lay expectations . |
| 27 | It was announced on April 18 that the Federal Collective Presidency had agreed to lift the " special measures " in the autonomous province of Kosovo , a part of the Serbian republic , where disturbances involving the ethnic Albanian majority had been continuing for more than a year . |
| 28 | Both countries had been speaking for some time of their desire to improve relations , without making much progress . |
| 29 | The last years had been alarming for his chauffeur . |
| 30 | The last years had been alarming for his chauffeur . |