Example sentences of "[adj] [noun pl] had [be] [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | At least the Spanish authorities had been conducting a professional search . |
| 2 | Strange voices had been talking inside her head forever . |
| 3 | These were the first multiparty elections to be held in the Soviet Union , the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet having in December 1989 abolished the constitutionally guaranteed communist monopoly of power [ see p. 37129 ] and having earlier in February passed a new law regulating the establishment and functioning of new political parties ; in fact new or revived political parties had been emerging in Lithuania since the beginning of 1989 [ see pp. 36487 ; 36854 ] . |
| 4 | The effect of relatively few firearms had been devastating against a warrior race with no previous experience of them . |
| 5 | Since mid century , philanthropists and social reformers had been urging the removal of the population of the inner-city slums to the more salubrious outskirts of the city . |
| 6 | She might only lose her temper about once every five years , but when she lost it , boy , did she lose it , and events these last few days had been urging her dangerously near to boiling-point . |
| 7 | At the other end of the building some very different experiments had been going on involving nuclear physicists who knew of the existence but few of the details of ZETA . |
| 8 | Perhaps the old gods had been listening , when she 'd made her wish at the Trevi Fountain . |
| 9 | At the same time , it should not be forgotten that some writers had been advocating the use of multiple methods for years : |
| 10 | Park official Fred Haala said some trippers had been harassing the crocodile . |
| 11 | Following upon the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 , a whole succession of English bishops had been publishing this legislation and adding to it their own diocesan statutes ; Pecham himself in 1281 drew upon the legislation of two archbishops — Langton ( 1222 ) and Boniface ( 1261 ) — and two papal legates — Otto ( 1237 ) and Ottobuono ( 1268 ) . |
| 12 | The reason behind this change was that , during the pilot programme , some mothers had been confusing ‘ one pinch ’ of lobon and ‘ two scoops ’ of gur and had instead used two pinches of lobon and one scoop of gur , thereby making a dangerous hypertonic solution . |
| 13 | About 700 men had been working at three pit levels up to 560 metres below the ground , over a 2 sq km area . |
| 14 | But some travellers had been trying to reach their destinations since last night . |
| 15 | Some boys had been jumping on the backs of trams , when the conductor 's attention was distracted , giving the emergency bell signal , stealing cash boxes and jumping off . |
| 16 | He told her he and Mallachy had got involved ‘ through Mallachy 's big mouth ’ in a late-club row up the Malone Road where some students had been blowing off their mouths over politics and religion , and it had almost come to blows . |
| 17 | By contrast , the Scottish Tories had been lobbying to keep the maximum personal element . |
| 18 | Japanese emigrants had been going abroad since the 1880s , the majority of them to Hawaii , then an independent kingdom . |
| 19 | Although a dozen or more Japanese drift-netters had been operating in the Tasman Sea for the previous 5 years , their presence had practically gone unnoticed . |
| 20 | They seemed to come into focus only slowly , a silent mass of tightly packed yellow faces glistening with perspiration ; scores of dark eyes had been watching him unwaveringly all the time , but their expressions remained uniformly blank . |
| 21 | Even though Rome was giving little in return in terms of moderating its claims to be the only true Christian church , faint liberal breezes had been blowing through the Vatican since the second Vatican Council . |
| 22 | If such things had been happening , I would have come across them . ’ |
| 23 | A lot of personal things had been happening to me during that year . |
| 24 | For a long time the industrious Bavarians had been preparing for such an attack . |
| 25 | Several of the Board 's leading civil servants had been pressing for more equality in provision . |
| 26 | Such conclusions had been growing in force in American higher education for many years , and especially since the investigation carried out by Harvie Branscomb , librarian of Duke University , in the later 19305 at the request of the Association of American Colleges . |
| 27 | ‘ In the end I could n't bear to be anywhere else , ’ she said , and added that if such practices had been going on in the islands as were alleged , everyone would have known about them . |
| 28 | The US and North Korean governments had been communicating for several years at a low level through the US embassy in Beijing . |
| 29 | Census data , for instance , made clear that an increasing proportion of the more numerous national groups had been choosing to live in their ‘ own ’ union republic , with the greatest increases in Central Asia , the Baltic and Armenia ( Russians , by contrast , had become more dispersed throughout the USSR ) . |
| 30 | Imagine the uproar if these drift-netters had been intercepting salmon going to France or Germany . |