Example sentences of "[noun sg] [vb past] been [v-ing] [prep] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Old Stopfordians ' Association had been trying for many years to raise sufficient money to build the Pavilion , and indeed had sold the Harrison Towns field some three years previously for this very reason . |
| 2 | Ian Clark and Nicholas Wheeler demonstrate the degree to which British thinking had been moving in this direction since 1943 . |
| 3 | His next move was to Madrid , an upheaval that he and his girlfriend had been planning for some time , and there his photographic education continued apace , despite one or two minor problems . |
| 4 | This was interesting ; some tritium was occurring naturally in the heavy water and when they measured the tritium levels after the experiment had been running for some hours they found that the tritium level had dropped . |
| 5 | The figures were much the same after the experiment had been running for three months , but 83% thought the experiment should continue . |
| 6 | That increase resulted in the rest of the world overtaking the European Community , whose investment had been falling since 1987 , reaching an all-time low in 1991 , with a share of just over 3 per cent . |
| 7 | Yet at the time the report was released , the actual company that was used as the basis for the research had been trading for five months and is coping well with a difficult launch period and providing to be highly successful in meeting its targets . |
| 8 | In addition the gas industry had been investing in expensive pipeline and other transportation systems to import gas from Canada , Mexico and Algeria , in anticipation of a continuing supply shortfall which the Natural Gas Policy Act effectively removed , in the short term at least . |
| 9 | 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 . |
| 10 | Dr Horn 's assessment is that by the 1790s the southern farm labourer 's standard of living had been falling for thirty years , and that an increase of around 85 per cent in money wages over the war years kept it just about level up to 1815 . |
| 11 | The critically-ill youngster had been staying with various people after walking out of home following rows with her stepfather John . |
| 12 | Our fellow-traveller had been mumbling for some time that he would ‘ hae tae get oot ! ’ . |
| 13 | Coun. Grant said he and Colburn parish council had been pressing for improved pedestrian safety at this point . |
| 14 | ( b ) As the deceased had been suffering from clinical depression which impaired his judgment , his act had not been voluntary and the defence of volenti failed . |
| 15 | If a seller had been ringing for fifteen or twenty minutes before the phone was even answered , he would naturally resent this ultimate insult . |
| 16 | To offer a perhaps extreme example , the Gloucestershire clothiers who celebrated the completing in 1779 – 82 of the Stroudwater Canal had been trying since 1730 to intercept the coal supplies moving down the Severn from the pits of the Midlands . |
| 17 | The group had been meeting for two years , and it was mainly a consciousness-raising group , although , with only about twenty groups in London as a whole , some of them , the ‘ housewives ’ , the women who worked part-time were also able to help run the voluntary rota in the central London office , the Women 's Liberation Workshop . |
| 18 | I am convinced that stuff had been accumulating for many years in this cellar and that Ernest Griffiths had no idea what was in there . |
| 19 | The commando had been waiting with disciplined patience some 400 yards ( 365m ) out . |
| 20 | The seething had been going on more or less from the time Taylor took over as manager . |
| 21 | The phone had been ringing for some time . |
| 22 | His bait had been lying in three inches of water ! |
| 23 | The baby had been endeavouring with grim determination to haul himself from the floor on to Alexandra 's knee , gripping handfuls of her skirts to assist himself and heaving with astonishing strength . |
| 24 | In practice Anglo-American co-operation had been increasing for some years , but this was now expanded . |
| 25 | So it was obvious that my father had been thinking of this long before . |
| 26 | Abingdon 's trade had been waning for some time , with its fulling mills lying in ruins and unemployment rife by 1538 . |
| 27 | An article in the Timber Trades Journal reported Michael Latham , chairman of a major UK timber firm and then president of the European tropical timber importers union , as saying that : ‘ The entry of the WWF into the field enlarged the scale of the problem for the timber trade , since before that time the trade had been dealing with small local conservationist groups ’ . |
| 28 | The Interior Ministry announced on May 22 that increasing unrest was the preliminary stage of a military coup which the banned Islamic fundamentalist Nahda movement had been preparing since 1988 . |
| 29 | The conference of 1923 was the culmination of long planning on the part of Lord Darlington ; indeed , in retrospect , one can see clearly how his lordship had been moving towards this point from some three years or so before . |
| 30 | The new aspect which foreign policy had been acquiring for two or three decades had suddenly grown to startling dimensions . |