Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] [adv] [prep] [noun pl] " in BNC.
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| 1 | Despite all the money the Politicals had been siphoning off for years , a very sore point with the rest of us , they claimed to have no material on the terrorists beyond a few isolated descriptions and photographs . |
| 2 | The expediter — ‘ Joy ’ — was the envoy of a client of mine : the Construction and Development Corporation of the Philippines ( CDCP ) , a local company my bank had been courting unsuccessfully for years . |
| 3 | Mr Fitzpatrick had been looking forward for months to the holiday with his son , who attended business meetings in the US capital . |
| 4 | Mr Fitzpatrick had been looking forward for months to a holiday in the States with his son . |
| 5 | The Sikhs , ignoring him , had been digging steadily for hours ; now they were beginning to shovel up wet earth . |
| 6 | The French , who had been staying away in droves , would also be targeted with a splashy new advertising campaign . |
| 7 | He had carried her in his arms as naturally as if he had been doing so for years , and she had felt right there . |
| 8 | It was n't that long ago that John Hurt was drinking heavily , and had been doing so for years . |
| 9 | They said yes , Andrus did come on Fridays and had been doing so for years . |
| 10 | Although previously I had been walking only on weekends , I was now walking up to five times a week for half an hour at a time . |
| 11 | He climbed them sadly until finally he reached a low corridor , which many years ago had been decorated in dark brown : the paint had been flaking off for years . |
| 12 | But they had been saying so for years , for more than a decade now . |
| 13 | The new body had been growing steadily for weeks . |
| 14 | After a job which had taken up all of her energies , Elaine did n't realise how long she would need to do all the jobs she had been putting off for years . |
| 15 | Maeve sat crouched over a table using a pool of light from a huge candelabra to stab furiously with her needle at a piece of embroidery she had been working on for years . |
| 16 | Now there is nothing to prevent plural continuation here ( e.g. They had been working hard for hours ) , but the incidence of such continuations was less than 5% , and continuations mostly were confined to singular references with individuals being in relatively stereotypical roles with respect to each other . |
| 17 | I thought this phone call had been going on for hours . |
| 18 | In many , the enclosure award of Georgian days was only the final clearing-up of remnants of open field that survived after piecemeal enclosure had been going on for generations or even centuries . |
| 19 | Almost equally important was the ending , by a series of agreements in 1745 , 1773 and 1790 , of a struggle for influence which had been going on for generations between the Reichskanzlei ( Imperial Chancery ) under its hereditary head , the Elector of Mainz , and the Hofkanzlei ( the Chancery of the Habsburg hereditary lands ) . |
| 20 | 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 . |
| 21 | She would phone the police and they would go out of their way to search her garden and reassure her of their vigilance , but it had been going on for years . |
| 22 | For God 's sake , this had been going on for years , with animals making a noise — surely this is what country life is all about and it would be a sad day if there were no noises from the farms or from the back gardens of our cottages . |
| 23 | A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed negotiations had been going on with landowners but he said it was perfectly normal procedure . |
| 24 | Since the embers were cool , Tallis imagined that she had been sitting there for hours . |
| 25 | Many had been decaying steadily for years : their owners had no use for them and could not imagine that anyone else would . |