Example sentences of "[pron] [modal v] have [been] [art] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The press release the editors sent me was acceptable , but I may have been the only person to get it . |
| 2 | This Melanie of his must have been a right madam , thought Leonora when Penry went off to get himself a glass of whisky . |
| 3 | I sent the cheque back , saying that although it had been immensely good of them to bring me up , I must have been a great burden and was now a disappointment , so I would prefer them to keep this money as some repayment for all they had done . |
| 4 | ‘ For once , not Rosemary , though I 'm getting more and more desperate about not knowing what to do for the best , ’ he confessed , but went on to explain , ‘ I spent a lot of time yesterday in realising that I must have been a real wet blanket when Naylor announced your engagement on Saturday . ’ |
| 5 | I must have been a constant reminder of her , and he could n't bear it . ’ |
| 6 | If I found there was no coffee in the house I 'd shout and swear at her and I must have been an absolute pain to live with . |
| 7 | In the circumstances I should have been the good daughter , studious and uninterested in boyfriends . |
| 8 | ‘ I could have been the only Irishman to play for both Billy Bingham and Jack Charlton , ’ he said . |
| 9 | I would have been a progressive teacher 's ideal pupil . |
| 10 | ‘ Kenneth and I would have been a marvellous companionship , but … ’ |
| 11 | I would have been a foolish man to do otherwise . |
| 12 | If I had put a tea cosy on my head I would have been a dead ringer for Mrs Pankhurst , but it affected my behaviour even more than my looks . |
| 13 | Perhaps if I had n't been a fool I would have been the dead girl in the road . ’ |
| 14 | It is another which may have been a christianised pagan ritual , evolved from dancing round a sacred site or stone on which a church was eventually built . |
| 15 | There was a port called Minoa on the south-west coast of Sicily which may have been a Crete-controlled trading station . |
| 16 | When interest group activity is added to electoral pressure , the ‘ shame ’ attached to being held responsible for social dissensus , lead to changes which may have been a voluntary response or have been supervised by a state responding to legitimate protest . |
| 17 | The generation of numbers was regarded by the early Pythagoreans as an actual physical operation occurring in space and time , and the basic cosmogonical process was identified with the generation of numbers from the initial unit , the Monad , which may have been a sophisticated version of the earlier Orphic idea of the primeval World-egg . |
| 18 | Offa 's victory over Cynewulf in 779 , therefore , would seem to have been a signal for intensified Mercian activity on Offa 's southern border which may have been an essential prerequisite to any sustained involvement in the south-east . |
| 19 | A further explanation could be that rats have a small ductular component of bile secretion which may have been the primary target of the observed response , as evidenced by the increase in biliary bicarbonate output observed in the canine studies . |
| 20 | But when I later tried to find my way back to the dining-room to finish my meal , which should have been a simple thing to do , I just could not locate it at all . |
| 21 | I felt the most awful failure , and thought that perhaps if we could try again — since the thing was done , the point of no return passed — we might arrange things better , somehow recapture the basis of feeling we had had , which should have been a perfect foundation for a love-affair , but which we had somehow bungled and thrown away . |
| 22 | It has been plausibly argued that the cutting of the folds ( which is very shallow ) was done during a retouching of the colour ( something which must have been a regular operation ; on colour see below , p. 28 ) . |
| 23 | Uncle once set the leg of a bull in Sleetburn , which must have been a tricky job , and I well remember the occasion when one of our cows had a really bad calving and Uncle saw her through . |
| 24 | To support Wilfrid was also to engage in a protracted dispute which must have been a long-term embarrassment both to the Northumbrian king and the archbishop of Canterbury . |
| 25 | One of the craft was in a mighty hurry when he set Judas for Jesus at John vi.67 , as happened in 1609 ; and so was his descendant in 1653 when , at Corinthians vi.9 , he pronounced that ‘ the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God ’ , which must have been a great comfort to a considerable number of citizens under the Commonwealth . |
| 26 | At one time , thinking of her childhood , which must have been a grey business , rather like a long , dull , cold Sunday , he had been furious with his father-in-law . |
| 27 | Here and there they pick up and make use of the old common balks in the former open fields , which must have been the usual way of proceeding from one village to another in open-field country , but for the most part they are drawn straight across the old furlongs and strips regardless of all considerations but that of directness . |
| 28 | There are occasional references to fullers during the 13th and 14th centuries but theirs must have been a small scale operation compared to that encountered further downstream around Cirencester . |
| 29 | Complications at the time of birth may cause mental handicap in the young child which might have been a normal foetus . |
| 30 | She heard him mutter something which might have been a mild swear word as he studied the Dobermann 's handiwork , but , his examination over , she quickly pulled up her sock again , and just as quickly planted that foot alongside her other one . |