Example sentences of "he [vb mod] [verb] [be] a [adj] " in BNC.
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| 1 | Now , in retrospect , she could see that marriage to him would have been a ghastly mistake , and that her reaction to discovering that he had been seeing other women while he had been engaged to her had had far more to do with wounded pride than with a wounded heart . |
| 2 | Lyfing was later a pluralist with no good reputation , but it is worth noting the Chronicle D text 's description of him as " the eloquent bishop " : like Wulfstan , he may have been a notable preacher . |
| 3 | you may even and this is a bit I mean Saturday lunchtime is a bit I 'm almost almost er oh the producer 's going , Careful careful , which he should know is a red flag to a bull and I might say no but I wo n't . |
| 4 | He must have been a strong contender for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar but then again , the history of the academy awards is littered with the words ‘ if only … ’ |
| 5 | This tall and handsome man , not so many years older than himself — he must have been a mere boy when McAllister was conceived — could only be by his manner , and his resemblance to her , McAllister 's formidable father , so often referred to . |
| 6 | He must have been a good bit older than her . |
| 7 | He must have been a monied gentleman because it was a marvellous house . |
| 8 | And , indeed , he must have been a tough little lad to have survived it all , though it was to take its toll on him eventually ; by the time he died in far-away London at the age of 29 he had lived through some very harsh times indeed . |
| 9 | He must have been a remarkable man , because when his aircraft was shot down he lost his right hand but before many months had passed he was back on his squadron with a hook on his right arm , and although I am not one hundred percent sure of my facts here , I believe he went back on operations as a navigator or air gunner . |
| 10 | I think , when I think it since , I think he must have been a remarkable man to work and slave like that . |
| 11 | He must have been a natural for the job , being one of the very few Greeks with an appropriate qualification . |
| 12 | The way Pomiane chose to convey the necessary quantity to his listeners — he must have been a compelling radio talker — and later to his readers was in terms of " a bunch as large as a bunch of violets " . |
| 13 | He might have been a natural broadcaster but for the quality of his scripts . |
| 14 | He might have been a minor orator , not quite in the senate , nor yet on the stage , more likely at the Bar of some prosperous provincial town ; in fact he had made his early and relatively modest pile in some wholesale business . |
| 15 | He had to sing properly in Zarewitsch and one was reminded yet again that he could have been a great singer if only he had tried . |
| 16 | He could have been a handsome man . |
| 17 | All he could see was a proud and fierce eagle , caged in an area that seemed too small for her , and her eyes staring at him blankly . |
| 18 | All he could see was a large boy wearing the uniform of one of the charity schools , where the children of the very poor used to go . |
| 19 | All he could produce was a stiff upper lip , while young Lady C cast meaningful looks at sturdy gamekeeper Mellors . |
| 20 | If he had n't died of that heart attack , he 'd have been a mental wreck . ’ |
| 21 | Naturally , Greenidge tried to emulate Richards which , when things went well , was fine , but when they did not it meant that , for a while , he gained a reputation for not being over-reliable ; perhaps he suffered from trying to hit the ball too hard , for there were plenty of people who felt that he would have been a better player had he not tried to ‘ bury the ball into the wall of some distant building ’ ( his own words ) at every opportunity . |
| 22 | That is , if then Q and If Q then R , where these are such conditionals , entail If P then R. It has sometimes been said that certain other " if " statements are not transitive — for example , " If J. Edgar Hoover had been born a Russian , he would have been a Communist " , " If he had been a Communist , he would have been a traitor " , and " If he had been born a Russian , he would have been a traitor " . |
| 23 | He would have been a good schoolmaster , I thought : gentle , precise , dry-humoured . |
| 24 | Thiercelin was somewhat less interested than he would have been a few days earlier . |
| 25 | While Chiang had little public support , he would have been a popular choice in the National Assembly , the veteran-dominated body responsible for electing the President . |
| 26 | He would have been a natural replacement for Blair , but in another cruel twist , Gallagher , a university student in Northampton , has committed himself to the English club this season and will not be available to Dungannon for the league . |
| 27 | Wihtred was in his sixth regnal year in April 697 ( CS 96 : S 18 ) , so he secured the kingship either early in 692 or after April 691 , when he will have been a young man of about 20 . |
| 28 | All he can remember is a green dragon and a pool of blood . |
| 29 | She added : ‘ The fact that he can write is a good sign . |
| 30 | In the eighteenth century Boswell describes his attack of gonorrhoea , which is complicated by an attack of epididymo-orchitis , and , after a miserable six weeks of self-imposed confinement at home , rejoices that he is cured because all he can see is a slight ‘ gleet ’ which he is happy to ignore . |