Example sentences of "they [vb past] been [v-ing] [art] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | They 'd been watching the site for some time . |
| 2 | They 'd been sharing a cell for the last two years . |
| 3 | ‘ They 'd been raiding the school at the end of Dwyer Street . ’ |
| 4 | It looked as if they 'd been having a party and had just taken off in the middle of it . |
| 5 | There were rumours they 'd been having an affair while he was actually teaching her , when she would have been fifteen ; there were rumours the girl was pregnant . |
| 6 | ‘ The man , who was known to the police , was one of the knockers they 'd been keeping an eye on . |
| 7 | Since about 1840 they had been expanding the scope of their products to include the whole range of cotton-processing machinery . |
| 8 | ‘ They had been discussing the idea that a pet should be for life not just for Christmas and decided to take the idea a step further , ’ she said . |
| 9 | ‘ Did you want me , Myra ? ’ she asked as calmly as if they had been discussing the weather and not within an ace of making either love or war . |
| 10 | As the boats began to leave the mouth of the River Tees , where they had been barring the way to Teesport , they claimed their eight-hour show of strength had been a success . |
| 11 | They had been defending the building for 31 days and there was blood on the floor . |
| 12 | Almost as if they had been awaiting the signal of an extra moon , they now took their prancings into a more intense phase . |
| 13 | In Arequipa I had watched women in the church of Santo Domingo giggle happily as they dressed the Virgin for a procession ; , behaving much as if they had been preparing a girl for a wedding , not a poor girl though , rather one Velasquez might be called upon to paint . |
| 14 | For nearly a generation they had been resisting the introduction of written inventories of peasant obligations , whose purpose was to prevent noblemen treating serfs in the arbitrary manner to which they were accustomed . |
| 15 | They had been challenging the sailing colliers for a number of years and the movement of coal was so important that the nautical press carried a daily feature and report on the coal trade . |
| 16 | At the last , Britain 's ambassador to Constantinople abandoned the encouragement he had been giving the Turks and advised them to go on negotiating , but by this time neither Britain nor France was in a position to withdraw the backing which they had been giving the sultan . |
| 17 | They had been crossing a scree ; there had been many loose stones , and footing was difficult , but surely at that point they had been traversing a gentler slope , and her employer had actually been standing on a flattish stretch of granite when she had fallen . |
| 18 | Suppose they had been having an affair , and she 'd dropped him ? ’ |
| 19 | She subsequently discovered that they had been having an affair for several months . |
| 20 | Protected from prosecution by an amnesty law of 1978 , the military opposed any such investigation but their claim that they had been fighting a war against left-wing subversion became increasingly untenable with the discovery of mass graves containing the bodies of their political opponents and the disclosure of how they had indulged in corrupt financial practices while in power , including the payment of US$3,000,000 to Pinochet 's son [ see pp. 37528-29 ; 37852-53 ; 37958 ] . |
| 21 | Amiss suspected they had been hammering the port harder than ever the previous night . |
| 22 | They had been delaying a statement of the Secretariat for Unity on religious liberty , which , at this stage , was intended to form part of the schema on ecumenism . |
| 23 | Right up until the coup in nineteen twenty seven they had been following a policy dictated by Moscow , dictated by Stalin which told them form alliances with the Kuomintang , work with the Kuomintang , first of all trust Chiang Kai-shek , then when Chiang Kai-shek turned on them they were told to trust the left Kuomintang leaders who were based in Wo Han in the middle Yangtze valleys , and then they turned on them a policy , in other words , that had proved absolutely disastrous . |