Example sentences of "[noun] had been [v-ing] [adv] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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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 | Corbett had been snooping there and seized a juicy morsel , first visiting his old friend at St Bartholomew 's and then the poisoner in Faltour 's Lane . |
| 3 | The car had been behaving all right the night before , when Brian had driven them back from Liz 's . |
| 4 | Stitch had been working hard , Rose granted him that . |
| 5 | 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 . |
| 6 | Any unease that Lucy had been feeling now vanished in the face of Charlie 's uncharacteristic embarrassment . |
| 7 | Following his death reports emerged that Falcone had been working closely with Judge Antonio di Pietro on the investigations into corruption in Milan 's local government [ see below ] . |
| 8 | The stabbing happened after the two teenagers had been drinking heavily . |
| 9 | The aim was to ensure that subjects had been fixating correctly by requiring them to report this digit immediately prior to recalling the stimulus . |
| 10 | In the meantime Edward had been thinking too . |
| 11 | 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 . |
| 12 | Johnny had been going too fast and had slipped , badly cutting his knee . |
| 13 | The world-wide media attention given to the tragedy was renewed 5 days after the accident when a London firm of Insurance Assessors and Adjustors announced that the aircraft had been carrying almost £1 million worth of rough diamonds . |
| 14 | The wind had been dropping steadily . |
| 15 | The horrified expression the other Rex now wore was exactly identical to the one the other other Rex had been wearing only moments before . |
| 16 | Long before Neil Kinnock let it be known that he had let his membership of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament lapse , the Labour Party and CND had been growing apart . |
| 17 | Dave did n't bother to shave until the evenings , and Colin 's shoes had been coming away at the sides for weeks . |
| 18 | One minister of the Church of Scotland in Orkney had been growing increasingly concerned about the growth of extremism in religion . |
| 19 | Devon had been romping away with the section , but by the beginning of August had seen their lead whittled away , with Oxfordshire emerging as a growing and serious threat to their supremacy , 20 points behind but with two matches in hand . |
| 20 | Fran watched the raindrops running down the glass panes , wishing foolishly that the sun had been shining again as a sort of omen . |
| 21 | And because Odette had been crying , Liam had been crying too . |
| 22 | For many months virtually everywhere in the Soviet Union stocks in state shops of even basic foodstuffs such as bread had been growing increasingly erratic , although some of the blame for this lay in the withholding of deliveries to the state supply network by farms and local authorities , in anticipation of prices rising or to meet local needs [ for indications of breakdown in the distribution system in May see p. 37538 ] . |
| 23 | Carol had been gazing gloomily at the lake . |
| 24 | He told me this morning that he thought the boy had been working too hard . ’ |
| 25 | Meanwhile sister-in-law Kim had been working hard too and in 12 months she lost 5st ( 32kg ) , plus 12½ins ( 32cm ) from her bust , 11 ins ( 28 cm ) from her waist , 14ins ( 36cm ) from her hips and 10½ins ( 26cm ) from each thigh ! |
| 26 | Michael Codron had been going there as part of the Kenneth Williams set since the time he worked for the Jack Hylton organization . |
| 27 | They 'd tasted like shit but they 'd sure done the stuff ; everybody else had been whining about the story while Pete had been lying there with his tongue hanging out . |
| 28 | And thus , when her father 's ghastly illness had first been diagnosed , and had then continued on its remorseless path , she 'd only discovered — when it was far too late — that she and Ross had been growing steadily and disastrously apart . |
| 29 | Non-oil imports had been rising steadily throughout 1987 and 1988 . |
| 30 | In recent months the residents of the area around the bar had been complaining almost nightly to the police about the noise that went on until the small hours and about the hypodermics left strewn around the piazza , a serious health hazard to the children who played there during the day . |