Example sentences of "[modal v] [verb] been [art] [adj] [conj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The game should have been a classic but clearly was n't . |
| 2 | it should have been a hundred or something . |
| 3 | she tell you it was a , the answer should have been a hundred and twenty nine and they 've got a thirty one in it yeah |
| 4 | This should have been a happy and holy occasion but the expressions on the faces looking up at him — Denis , Hana , Uncle Mick , Carmella , now pale and shaken , even poor Joey — told him more than any words how empty the action was . |
| 5 | All three spoke as though the moment were of no real consequence , but I know that for Mother and for O at least it must have been a strange and moving moment . |
| 6 | I suspect you were disguised as a personable young man , a merry companion for the Gascons , after what must have been a long and gruelling journey . |
| 7 | Even the sight of a national candidate must have been a rare and unusual occasion . |
| 8 | Peter clearly took to heart what must have been a challenging and potentially testing message . |
| 9 | In peacetime the town must have been a sleepy and slow-moving place , but at the start of 1945 it fairly hummed with activity , being surrounded in all directions by RAF and American Air Force stations . |
| 10 | We lay side by side on the floor all over the house — there must have been a dozen or more of us , including nice old Ma Mi who was delighted to see us . |
| 11 | No guidelines are given for the interpretation of s8 except that the term to be included must have been a fair and reasonable one having regard to the circumstances which were , or ought reasonably to have been , known to or in the contemplation of , the parties when the contract was made ( s11(1) ) . |
| 12 | I think that for once we need feel no qualms in taking Diodorus as a faithful epitomizer of what must have been a compact and careful section of Posidonius on the slave war in Sicily . |
| 13 | It was an amazing last 15 mins and the crowd fo nearly 38,000 must have been the biggest and noisiest for at least 10 yrs . |
| 14 | He must have been the best-known and most celebrated inhabitant of Baldersdale — excepting Hannah Hauxwell , of course — within living memory . |
| 15 | Given the complexities of concurrent working , there might have been a hundred and one other explanations . |
| 16 | The trees thinned to reveal what once might have been a clearing but which now resembled only a poisonous-looking wilderness . |
| 17 | Tatham might have been a natural but Magill had been the achiever in the secret world . |
| 18 | Veneers appear in the 1880s although an eighteenth-century example was discovered during the 1983–4 excavations at St Augustine-the-Less , Bristol , but this might have been no more than an attempt on the part of the coffin-maker to mask some splits at the shoulder caused by over-zealous saw-cuts when kerfing . |
| 19 | Of course , this might have been no more than a diplomatic ruse by the Russians to initiate a dependence which would permit a later imposition of heavier tribute payments without negative results . |
| 20 | The easy , informed arguments they had about the Kesselring case proved him wrong : as they talked , the two of them might have been no more than friendly colleagues . |
| 21 | On waking , it occurred to her with renewed conviction that the experience of two days before might have been no more than a temporary aberration of an exhausted mind . |
| 22 | How do they feel towards those who consigned them to what could have been a violent and horrific death ? |
| 23 | Otherwise you may aggravate something that , with a little rest and good management , could have been no more than a minor injury . |
| 24 | Some may say yes and some may say no and it will have all the appearance of a decision being made , but the real structure may have been no more than the bland question/answer relationship between the teacher-in-role and the class . |
| 25 | Or it may have been no more than a ruse to exert pressure and force him to reconsider . |
| 26 | This may have been no more than wishful thinking , and during the campaign the Conservative Party managed to project itself as the most radical of the contenders for office . |
| 27 | What this would have looked like is sometimes difficult to imagine — it may have been no more than a larger-than-average farmstead , or it may have been a palace such as those found at Yeavering and Cheddar . |
| 28 | This suggests that the fall in equity prices in October 1987 may have been no more than a correction to the market . |
| 29 | Or there may have been a sudden and unexpected explosion in the local mouse population , leading to a spate of hunting and killing by a pet cat that normally feeds only at home . |
| 30 | That may have been an extreme and , I hope , isolated case , but it underlines the need to ensure that teachers are not deterred from voicing concerns through fear of reprisals . |