Example sentences of "it [modal v] [verb] be a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | It may have been a controversial church , but its image as a party church dates only from about 1977 when Vanguard disappeared and unionist politics became a straight fight between the Officials and the DUP . |
| 2 | Under his breath , so that Earl could not hear him , he murmured ‘ Holy cow ! ’ ( ’ or it may have been a little more graphic ’ ) . |
| 3 | However , subsequent archaeologists proved him mistaken , seeing in Machu Picchu an important agricultural centre serving Cuzco ; others speculated that it may have been a religious centre , where handmaidens for the sun god lived . |
| 4 | Well it may have been a grunt of irritation that his lovely hire-car was steaming up with two sweaty , stinking hill-walkers who had forced their way in uninvited , but I prefer to think disbelief . |
| 5 | It may have been a very naive discovery on my part , but that said something very definite to me about the way we live . |
| 6 | It may have been a glamorous enough life on stage and , despite the famous Tiller ethos , at the stage door , where the young lads who laid siege to the girls came to be known as Stage Door Johnnies . |
| 7 | It may have been a traditional marriage , gift , given to couples to bring them good luck . |
| 8 | He was beginning to feel that it may have been a mistake , it may have been wiser to have remained elsewhere . |
| 9 | Charlton thought it may have been a kind of store-yard where goods for the abbey were landed and deposited . |
| 10 | The faience plaques Evans discovered in the East Wing of the Knossos Labyrinth probably originally fitted together , jigsaw-fashion , to make a picture of a complete town ; it may have been a town under attack from invaders , like the town shown on the silver Siege Rhyton found at Mycenae . |
| 11 | Digital Equipment Corp realises that it may have been a little hasty in taking its toys away in a huff , and has returned to the Technology Plc fold by re-appointing the Warrington-based company as a value-added reseller for predominantly desktop and server products : DEC withdrew its business , when Technology was acquired by ICL Plc in July 1992 ( CI No 1,966 ) ; Technology has now joined DEC 's Corporate Reseller Programme , and , according to DEC UK 's director of complementary solutions organisation sales , Ian Smith , the company is expected to ‘ play a key role in our increasingly value-added reseller-led product selling strategy ’ . |
| 12 | It may have been a recurrent nova , and although it is probably unlikely that it will ever come within binocular range , if it reappears at all , there is no harm in looking for it . |
| 13 | AD 10 at this particular place ; it seems to have had a brief existence ; it may have been a Political embarrassment to Cunobelinus at some stage in his early career , or the traders may have just moved elsewhere . |
| 14 | Afterwards nobody could tell us about our route and it may have been a first ascent — we still do not know . |
| 15 | At first this was interpreted as a separate medusa-like form , but it appears in a number of specimens in just such a position and some now think that it may have been a holdfast . |
| 16 | It may have been a teetotal , chapel-going household but do n't imagine it was ever narrow-minded or lacked a sense of fun . |
| 17 | As for [ h ] -dropping — I have suggested elsewhere ( J. Milroy , 1983 ) that in the Middle Ages it may have been a marker of more cultured speech . |
| 18 | It may have been a sign of things to come that though the strike led to a long lasting respect between Havelock Wilson and Tom Mann , no such relationship developed with Ben Tillett , who in his recollections of the strike refrains from making mention of Wilson at all . |
| 19 | It may have been a consciousness of the inevitability of stalemate or gradual decline on the wages front at home which led Wilson to divert much of his attention the international scene . |
| 20 | Alexander said that it may have been a form of epilepsy , exacerbated by the atmospheric-electric disturbances of the mistral and the heat . |
| 21 | This represented a quite remarkable compromise which required the co-operation of Aethelred , king of the Mercians , who restored Wilfrid 's Mercian possessions , and Aelfflaed , abbess of Whitby , whose influence with King Aldfrith is likely to have been considerable ( Vita Wilfridi , ch. 43 ) , but it may have been a manifestation of the insecurity of Aldfrith in the years immediately following his accession . |
| 22 | It may have been a trick of the light . |
| 23 | It may have been a stopping-place for drovers — but he could still do Dr Johnson the honour of making lemonade from fresh lemons . |
| 24 | At its worst it may have been a parasitic racket representing only itself to the detriment of all , but on the larger canvas of society it gave political power to a narrow group of substantial landowners in loose alliance with merchant princes and the small towns which returned members to Parliament . |
| 25 | It may have been a factor in leading a plaintiff to sue in the county court rather than the High Court when his or her claim lay within its jurisdiction . |
| 26 | It might have been a question of time , it may have been a question of tooling , it may have been a question of instruments , it may have been a question of materials , raw materials , or a compilation of all of these things . |
| 27 | It might have been a question of time , it may have been a question of tooling , it may have been a question of instruments , it may have been a question of materials , raw materials , or a compilation of all of these things . |
| 28 | It might have been a question of time , it may have been a question of tooling , it may have been a question of instruments , it may have been a question of materials , raw materials , or a compilation of all of these things . |
| 29 | It may have been a domus inclusa but is now a coal hole . |
| 30 | What this would have looked like is sometimes difficult to imagine — it may have been no more than a larger-than-average farmstead , or it may have been a palace such as those found at Yeavering and Cheddar . |