Example sentences of "[noun pl] had [been] [v-ing] [adv] [prep] " in BNC.
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| 1 | A British Transport police spokesman said : ‘ Fans had been drinking heavily before the accident and would have been fairly merry . ’ |
| 2 | Crimean Tatars had been drifting back to their former homeland since 1987 , and a June 1988 central government ruling confirmed their right to residency [ see p. 36036 ] . |
| 3 | The ovoid seemed to project a kind of deadly aura and , as Rostov compared the black egg shape with his memory of the framework structures which he had encountered previously , he wondered if the designers had been striving consciously for the visual effect which they had achieved . |
| 4 | The aim was to ensure that subjects had been fixating correctly by requiring them to report this digit immediately prior to recalling the stimulus . |
| 5 | Her admirer had already been bound over to keep the peace after being arrested on her doorstep , and his unwelcome attentions had been going on for over six years . |
| 6 | Somebody calculated that if the surface of the earth was covered with a layer of protein molecules a metre thick , right over the whole surface of the earth erm each one , each protein different from every other one , and let us suppose furthermore that each of these proteins had been changing once as second , uniquely , into some different kind ever since the formation of the earth , we would still have tried out only quite a small fraction of the available possible proteins a hundred amino acids long . |
| 7 | Dave did n't bother to shave until the evenings , and Colin 's shoes had been coming away at the sides for weeks . |
| 8 | Non-oil imports had been rising steadily throughout 1987 and 1988 . |
| 9 | She noted , she said with a pained expression , that output from the UK Vehicle Division of United Motors had been falling steadily over the previous ten years . |
| 10 | The signal is dated 1 August 1942 and states that a stream of messages had been coming in from Stirling in the desert regarding the shipment of supplies by Bombays for delivery on 4 August . |
| 11 | I tried all the channels from 1 to 40 in case the hijackers had been messing about with the rig in the truck , but still got nothing . |
| 12 | He said that credit costs had been rising partly as a reaction to global inflationary fears , but that the current high interest rates were necessary and appropriate and were a way of keeping inflation in check . |
| 13 | Troubles had been piling up in recent months as the owners struggled to restore the house 's reputation . |
| 14 | When questioned they admitted that this state of affairs had been going on for some time . |
| 15 | I do n't know how long it was that things had been going badly for them but I do know there were problems . |
| 16 | Englishmen had been settling overseas for a century and a half but their colonies had been inhabited by people who , apart from the slaves who got no choice in the matter , had no particular difficulty in committing themselves to being loyal to King George : Englishmen , Scotsmen , Irishmen , or Germans would accept the King without question , and the Dutch of New York and the Acadians of Nova Scotia were almost the only people who had ever been asked to make a serious change of allegiance , which had been harder for the Acadians because of religious differences . |
| 17 | Some of the girls had been looking forward to this as to the highlight of the trip , but Clara had been dreading it , and for a classic reason , which was that she had nothing nice to wear . |
| 18 | Ramped Craft Logistic and mexeflote rafts had been arriving regularly throughout the night , continuing the build-up of vehicles and ammunition Which had been going on for the past two days . |
| 19 | The pupils had been going on at me about ‘ You 're always picking on me ’ ' and then finally the boy said to him that he was picking on him because he was black and he said ‘ That just triggered it off ’ . |
| 20 | Negotiations had been going on for 17 months before the strike . |
| 21 | A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed negotiations had been going on with landowners but he said it was perfectly normal procedure . |
| 22 | Japanese emigrants had been going abroad since the 1880s , the majority of them to Hawaii , then an independent kingdom . |
| 23 | Since early February oyster-catchers had been arriving back from spending the winter around the big estuaries of mainland Britain and by the end of March were well distributed in coastal areas . |
| 24 | Meanwhile however , the rest of the Hurricanes had been suffering badly at the hands of the German fighters . |
| 25 | Overhead the clouds had been breaking up for some time . |
| 26 | Only the day before , those noble , horned beasts had been filing unsuspectingly through the long grass of the plain , intending to wallow harmlessly in some cool place through the heat of the day . |
| 27 | ‘ In the end I could n't bear to be anywhere else , ’ she said , and added that if such practices had been going on in the islands as were alleged , everyone would have known about them . |
| 28 | The raids had been going on for months , but had become increasingly violent : by mid-May they involved border posts being strafed with bullets or set on fire . |
| 29 | A wider political initiative , with UN armed observers escorting food and convoys , and increased financial output , was not launched until as late as August , by which time looting of food supplies had been going on for some months . |