Example sentences of "[noun sg] had be [v-ing] [adv prt] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | ‘ Ought we to try to get away ? ’ whispered Snodgrass , whose mind had been going along similar paths . |
| 2 | The two of them had been at daggers drawn ever since 1183 , and in recent months , as incident followed incident , tension had been building up to a new peak . |
| 3 | People from outside the college had been coming in freely , causing trouble , stealing and even beating students . |
| 4 | The considerable scope for destocking — the main cause of the recession of the early 1980s — was highlighted by the CSO , which said industry had been building up inventories of unsold goods for two years . |
| 5 | The experiments , however , involved drawing fibres and blowing bubbles of molten glass and one day , after the work had been going on for some months , Lockspeiser went home leaving the gas torch used for melting the glass still burning . |
| 6 | Quite a lot of the clean-up work had been going on apace of the actual stripdown of the engine so when the latter was finished , the former was not far behind . |
| 7 | If gaunt-face had been looking up at the Clubroom windows in the hope of seeing Filmer — or of Filmer seeing him — maybe Filmer would come down to talk to him and maybe I could photograph them both together , which might one day prove useful . |
| 8 | Their success revealed the misunderstanding had been going on for six years . |
| 9 | Concern that this uncontrolled expansion of the private sector had been siphoning off funds that might have been more cost effectively used in home based community care led to the government commissioning reviews of resource management and quality of care . |
| 10 | Toleration as wide-ranging as this would not have been acceptable in England , where hostility to Roman Catholicism had been building up for seventy years since Mary Tudor 's attempt to wipe out Protestantism . |
| 11 | We have established the assassin had been tramping round in the snow , yet Lady Beatrice and Rachel are wearing the same clothes as they were this morning and , as far as I know , never left the house . ’ |
| 12 | On the other side of the House , Norman Tebbit and the rest of the rabid Right had been nodding along to Mr Kaufman . |
| 13 | By this time , Lou and Charlie had moved too — the business had been running down for a long period and there was no point in staying in a flat over a shop that did n't exist any more . |
| 14 | The last time he had seen him the Trollslayer had been wandering off to booze with his fellow outcast Dwarfs . |
| 15 | Towards the end of the 19th century , a crisis had been building up over the names of organic compounds . |
| 16 | Something approaching a personal crisis had been building up since Nietzsche 's return from the unforgettable distress of war . |
| 17 | But he strenuously denied that anything of the sort had been going on anywhere in Europe around the time of the Lockerbie disaster . |
| 18 | The three local women that she 'd brought in as help for the evening had been buzzing around behind her , greasing dishes and setting up trays and napkin-wrapping cutlery . |
| 19 | Looking back I find it hard to believe that I did n't keep abreast of all the war news ; but the war had been going on for so long that I , like almost every girl of my generation , had lost interest in it . |
| 20 | She knew more about The Hell Fire Club ; she was certain that was what her husband had been working on . |
| 21 | The Daughters of the American Revolution had been racking up a heavy rep in the past few months . |
| 22 | These claims were never universally accepted ; the destruction of the unity of Christendom by the Reformation helped to undermine the authority of the Pope to allocate territory , but it was Catholic France that first challenged Spain 's position in the West Indies and that conflict had been going on for some years when in 1559 , at the end of one round of European wars , France and Spain included in the peace treaty a clause which stated that fighting in regions west of the Azores or south of the Tropic of Cancer was not to be taken as a reason for resuming hostilities in Europe . |
| 23 | Negotiations for a concordat had been going on between Spain and the Vatican for about the same length of time as those between Spain and the United States . |
| 24 | The moon had been shining in , silvering everything with its ghostly light , when Roman had made love to her . |
| 25 | His mum , Jacqueline , of Cardigan , said : ‘ When I bent down I could see that the metal mesh had been cutting in to his scalp . ’ |
| 26 | For most , there is an enduring search for bonds of love and loyalty , and other research showed that four out of five teenagers involved in a sexual relationship had been going out with their partner for six months or more . |
| 27 | On looking more closely , we discovered that in one corner of the house , where the Electricity Authority had been carrying out some repair work , the pipe insulation had n't been replaced . |
| 28 | The argument had been going on for some time . |
| 29 | 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 . |
| 30 | This was what it was all about , she realised hazily — this was what her whole life had been leading up to , this man , this place , this almost unbearably exquisite time out of time . |