Example sentences of "[vb past] [adv] been [v-ing] a [adj] " in BNC.

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1 The Russian panslavist press had long been advocating a Franco-Russian alliance and in November 1887 Bismarck had forbidden the Reichsbank to float a Russian loan .
2 Patients randomised to the tablet groups were advised to continue their pre-trial diets — unless they had already been taking a high fibre diet — in which case they were encouraged to reduce their fibre intake during the trial .
3 Y-you … ’ she spluttered , and , loving him , found it absolutely beyond belief that he should believe that she and his cousin had just been having a fine old time .
4 There were only three crumpled cigarette-packs , a sign that whoever had been in the truck had possibly been waiting a long time .
5 He told the details to an incredulous audience , although tactfully leaving out the part about Steinmark 's base habits , merely suggesting that he had probably been taking a short cut across the line .
6 In 1935 , the very same Neville Chamberlain , who ten years earlier had even been considering a contributory earnings-related scheme , could tell the Conservative Party annual conference that better retirement pensions would be prohibitively costly , would release only a paltry number of jobs and would create grave legal and administrative problems in enforcing the retirement condition : ‘ Are you going to create a new penal offence — the offence of doing work ? ’ he asked .
7 Chaot had reportedly been nursing a damaged rudder stock for some time , but as water was coming into the boat in increasing quantities , Boschmann decided to abandon ship as soon as other yachts on passage to the Caribbean could come to his assistance .
8 It should be added here that the high clergy hardly recognized that they had actually been exercising a political religious power of a specifically sectarian or monopolistic type .
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