Example sentences of "[pron] [vb mod] have [been] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | This Melanie of his must have been a right madam , thought Leonora when Penry went off to get himself a glass of whisky . |
| 2 | 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 . |
| 3 | ‘ 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 . ’ |
| 4 | I must have been a constant reminder of her , and he could n't bear it . ’ |
| 5 | I would have been a progressive teacher 's ideal pupil . |
| 6 | ‘ Kenneth and I would have been a marvellous companionship , but … ’ |
| 7 | I would have been a better person than I am today . |
| 8 | I would have been a foolish man to do otherwise . |
| 9 | 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 . |
| 10 | 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 . |
| 11 | There was a port called Minoa on the south-west coast of Sicily which may have been a Crete-controlled trading station . |
| 12 | 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 . |
| 13 | 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 . |
| 14 | 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 . |
| 15 | 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 . |
| 16 | Two seconds , one of which should have been a first . |
| 17 | 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 ) . |
| 18 | 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 . |
| 19 | 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 . |
| 20 | 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 . |
| 21 | 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 . |
| 22 | 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 . |
| 23 | Complications at the time of birth may cause mental handicap in the young child which might have been a normal foetus . |
| 24 | 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 . |
| 25 | In the south-west bath-wing there was a central room with a small cistern and niches for presumed ‘ ritual usages ’ ; from this room came a pottery model fir-cone , which could have been a votive offering . |
| 26 | Jim Keeble recalls one amusing incident in ASF which could have been a terrible accident . |
| 27 | The press would have had a field day , and what Frank did n't realize is that he himself would have been a laughing stock . |
| 28 | Yeah , but if they 'd have , if they 'd have said look , we 're onto erm a job now which would 've been a big job and it looks like it finishing up in Yorkshire , finishing up in Lancashire , be ready if we give a call out . |
| 29 | Well I 'd like to speak about the gallery I like to speak for myself and er just the visual arts and er the gallery when it first started was a gallery very much appreciated by appreciated by the Eastern Region er they saw it as potential a very significant gallery in the whole region which would have been a marvellous thing for Harlow to have . |
| 30 | In the early 1870s a six-week round trip for two people from London via Belgium , the Rhine Valley , Switzerland and France — perhaps still the standard tourist itinerary — cost about £85 , or roughly 20 per cent of the income of a man earning £8 a week , which would have been a respectable servant-keeping income in those days . |