Example sentences of "[vb past] be [v-ing] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | I 'd been expecting a great hall with a giant round table , towering turrets , a moat and a drawbridge , but , of course , it turned out to be a ruin . |
| 2 | I 'd been writing a monthly column for Options as long as I 'd been writing at all . |
| 3 | He also told police he 'd been copying a homosexual video tape . |
| 4 | I 'd been applying a special cream to his ankles which was supposed to harden the skin , but it did n't seem to do much good . |
| 5 | Then they went back to camp and the only person there was Miguel the interpreter , who 'd been having a long conversation with one of the Indians and when he turned round all the other Indians had scarpered . |
| 6 | Clearly he 'd been having a bad time of it . |
| 7 | All the better that the operation rehabilitated the credibility of the police who 'd been having a bad press in the early years of the decade . |
| 8 | If I 'd been doing a pukka delivery , I could just have carried straight on virtually due north and come to City Road . |
| 9 | I have no compass to tell me what I am destined for ; and yet , when I look back , everything seems to fit as well together as if I 'd been following a benevolent daimon all along … |
| 10 | A tangle of twisted metal is all that remains of the giant oil tank that fuelled the power station at the edge of the Bulmers factory site.It 's believed the man who died was welding a measuring gauge on top of the tank when it exploded , scattering debris over a wide area.The man died before he reached hospital.After the first explosion , there were further blasts creating a pall of smoke over Hereford.Bulmers Director Terry Watts was in an office nearby : |
| 11 | Mr Butler had been taking a collection-box home when he was attacked on the Tube , kicked in the face , kneed in the stomach , had his head banged against a door and almost strangled . |
| 12 | The other women often talked about young men they knew , and one of them had been taking a young man back to her flat during the evenings . |
| 13 | Kochen maintained that DEC had been taking a worldwide census of ‘ hundreds of customers ’ recently to ascertain whether OSF/1-on-MIPS was a viable policy . |
| 14 | He had been serving a 20-year term in Nicosia 's central prison . |
| 15 | I had been swimming a long time that first Sunday , far out in the bay , and he could easily have slipped the things on to the Bourani end of the beach while I was in the water . |
| 16 | It was later compounded by the fall-out from a family explosion : on Roger Ackerley 's death in 1929 the son discovered that , first , his father had been maintaining a separate menage and that , second , the money had run out . |
| 17 | All the while , Julian Bailey had been maintaining a strong , gritty pursuit with the Nissan , and he was only 7secs behind Baldi 's second-placed Mercedes when he made his fuel stop early on lap 31 . |
| 18 | He had been using a great deal of unnecessary and inappropriate tension when reciting . |
| 19 | Their G P Felix Lusman had been using a faulty technique for the past five years . |
| 20 | For this search I teamed up with two young friends , both experienced detector users , who had been searching a nearby farm and thus knew the area well . |
| 21 | Ever since the two disastrous meetings she had had recently about Matilda , the first with the Headmistress and the second with the dreadful Mr and Mrs Wormwood , Miss Honey had been thinking a great deal about this child and wondering how she could help her . |
| 22 | Newley had been wearing a black , loosely knitted jersey , which was why Dougal had not noticed the wounds earlier . |
| 23 | He had been wearing a blue sweatshirt over his T-shirt , which he had taken off after the pub fight broke out . |
| 24 | The girl , who will be seven next month , told the High Court in Glasgow that her grandfather had been wearing a red nose and had been dressed like a clown at the time . |
| 25 | She had been wearing a light cotton shirt with a dark blue skirt . |
| 26 | Husband had been filling a curved briar from a silver pocket box . |
| 27 | I was sure she had been holding a small phial with the letters ‘ SUL ’ written on it . |
| 28 | So , Mavis at least had been getting a good earful . |
| 29 | Meanwhile the warden 's cat , who had been enjoying a light snack in the dustbin , saw Emily , saw the milk , and that is all I can remember , it happened so quickly . |
| 30 | Especially since by then Laura had been earning a great deal of money , and all the past difficulties had more or less been solved . |