Example sentences of "[adj] [pron] had been [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | By the time I was twelve years old I had been thinking for some time about getting a bird of my own . |
| 2 | The sun was full on her face , and it was clear she had been crying . |
| 3 | Overall , when the children on the course were compared to those in the control groups , it was found that none of them had taken up smoking and some who had been using snuff before the start of the programme had now given up . |
| 4 | The sergeant bumped over the sleeping-policemen and gazed at the neatly trimmed lawns and hedges with aggrieved jealousy in his eyes : the private estate was a symbol of a world from which he was excluded , a world of privilege and snobbery , a world that had turned its back on the poor , the sick and the unfashionable who had been swarming round their car only ten minutes before . |
| 5 | To do this he had been dropping dummies by parachute near Italian prisoner-of-war camps , and the advent of some real parachutists was an obvious gift . |
| 6 | As he moved away from the tree it became apparent to Marian that between him and the trunk lay a substantial sack , and that it was this he had been defending so stoutly . |
| 7 | The man had been so embarrassed he had been pretending to study the graffiti on the cell walls . |
| 8 | But as a bolide descends to lower altitudes , C H declines inversely with atmospheric density , so that which had been increasing , becomes effectively constant . |
| 9 | And that night steals some milk and er sure enough it did come and then when the witch woken up in the morning and found out that somebody had been milking the cow she said er whoever stealing the milk will never work for six month . |
| 10 | The most upsetting thing was that it made her realise just how much she had been allowing him to guide her in the decision , putting her desire to leave the nurses ' home and her pleasure at Dr Entwistle 's recommendation very much in second place . |
| 11 | Cranston 's wife was making herself comfortable on the bench whilst the gallant who had been eyeing Benedicta had now moved closer and was talking quietly with her . |
| 12 | When she was nineteen she had been going out with a steady boyfriend for three years , and they had decided to get married . |
| 13 | Since 1171 he had been negotiating with Count Humbert of Maurienne . |
| 14 | Gradually , during his visits there , he began to tell her how much he had been looking forward to it , and confided how he would remember their ‘ walking the policies , ( which is what Delia Sutherland called a businesslike like across her property ) and sitting up late at night drinking brandy , discussing plans . |
| 15 | He saw the naked longing in her amber eyes and realized for the first time how much he had been neglecting her . |
| 16 | Obviously a tall , long-legged person will need a big horse ; I recently sold a 17.3hh gelding to a man of six foot eight who had been looking for a long time ! |
| 17 | Eleven who had been working near the point of irruption had died in the torrent of stinking , clinging , liquid peat . |
| 18 | When I came to the Riding in 1960 I had been teaching in Leeds for five fairly empty years . |
| 19 | It was obvious they had been talking about him . |
| 20 | I went reinforced too by all I had been doing for myself and with the knowledge that I felt better than I had felt for some time and that that growth towards well being appeared to be increasing with each day . |
| 21 | He said yesterday : ‘ I 'm sure I had been making inquiries ( in 1945 ) about what would happen to people who we sent back . |
| 22 | The latter I had been intending to read for years and , by happenstance , had come across a cheap edition in a book sale just days before setting out . |
| 23 | I was sure she had been holding a small phial with the letters ‘ SUL ’ written on it . |
| 24 | Rather desperately , Celia steered the conversation round to her and Brian 's new house in the country , how Alison and Geoffrey must come and stay , that they would be less than fifty miles apart ; while Alison , obviously thankful to turn to less delicate matters , regaled her with a description of all she had been doing in her garden and some rather dull anecdotes about the neighbours whom Celia and Brian had met on their last visit . |
| 25 | For a moment she thought he was going to throw his arms round her and hug her , she was sure he had been thinking of it , but he hesitated and she turned away . |
| 26 | Since the 1970s it had been fending off pressure from Scandinavia . |
| 27 | The freeing of political parties in March 1990 led to the formation of numerous new parties and the emergence as official opposition of some of those which had been operating within the FNDR . |
| 28 | With the same conversion , bus route 64 which had been running between West Croydon and Addington , was extended from Croydon to Tooting , supplementing route 220 . |
| 29 | The results of the Concorde trial came as ‘ a considerable shock ’ , he says , particularly to those who had been expecting some positive outcome , however small . |
| 30 | Those who had been watching him work believed that in spite of the traumas , Hopper the actor was a star , and Hopper the director had completed an extraordinarily good film which , according to one description , included some ‘ hauntingly beautiful footage ’ . |