Example sentences of "they [modal v] have been [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Some of them must have been terrifying . |
| 2 | Well , both of them should have been wearing their life jackets before they were over water , and X should not have stowed the dinghy in the locker area when he could have kept it closer to hand on one of the spare rear seats . |
| 3 | The sheet metal workers , who cut sheet metal to the design of the drawings of the part of a car , earned 2s 6d ( 12p ) per hour , and did a lot of overtime at one and a quarter time , which means that many of them would have been earning £6 or £7 per week , and be well over the arbitrary divide of £4 suggested as a line for the divide between the working class and the middle class . |
| 4 | It 's thought they may have been drinking in this pub on Wellingborough road earlier in the evening . |
| 5 | They may have been intending to talk about reform of the Labour Party constitution , but what ordinary trade unionists heard was senior members of the Party talking as if they were ashamed of the trade union connection . |
| 6 | The fact that the thieves confined their attention to the Early Cycladic display case , ignoring many other important works , suggests that they may have been stealing to order something which is a matter of concern to museum staff and archaeologists in Greece . |
| 7 | These men were in touch with Edward Balliol , the heir of the Scottish king dispossessed by Edward I , and they may have been planning some move to recover their position in either England or Scotland . |
| 8 | They may have intended to present the information as a factual account , or they may have been investigating a particular area with a view to using the material obtained as a background for a piece of more imaginative writing . |
| 9 | They may have been suffering with anything from stress-related migraines to pre-menstrual tension . |
| 10 | Reporters had from 8.30am to 10am to write up the meeting or function they may have been covering the night before , or else they re-wrote stories from the morning edition of the Regina Leader-Post . |
| 11 | For Foucault , the tendency of theories of ideology to entrammel themselves in the categories of psychoanalysis , even with the eternal in Althusser 's case , means that they themselves begin to utilize the very procedures of individuation that they ought to have been analysing . |
| 12 | They must have been watching from a hill-top as I rode towards them because suddenly I was surrounded by a company of about 40 soldiers , all aged between 17 and 18 years . |
| 13 | ‘ They must have been meeting places for The Hell Fire Club he discovered . ’ |
| 14 | Master Thomas said they must have been looking for people , not things , and thought you should be warned , so … ’ |
| 15 | They must have been singing for , though Sharpe could hear nothing , he could see their mouths opening and closing in unison . |
| 16 | They must have been riding for a long time , but there was no sign of a large town , only a solitary light shining ahead . |
| 17 | They must have been moving alongside us in cover , taking our measure , and they had two archers ahead , one either side the track . |
| 18 | The enemy horsemen were silhouetted on the southern skyline and Sharpe suspected they must have been trailing him ever since he had emerged from the trees . |
| 19 | This confused Benny at first , until she realized that they must have been going deeper into the complex , while Froebe would have assumed she was making for the outside . |
| 20 | They must have been coming to collect Blagg , and very certain they would find him . |
| 21 | they must have been putting two thousand in you know |
| 22 | They must have been waiting in a car , as neither wore an overcoat and both were suddenly there smack in front of me , blocking the pavement , tantalizingly close to home . |
| 23 | ‘ They must have been planning to kill Miss Tuckey . ’ |
| 24 | Vaults with a ground-level diameter of 9 metres or so , such as the one at Platanos ( Figure 53C ) , were certainly technically feasible ; they must have been imposing structures in their original state . |
| 25 | ‘ Oh , they must have been selling flowers for ages , Luke . |
| 26 | There is a general passivity , a loss of good conscience — ‘ they must have been doing something very wrong there ’ ; ‘ we must have been wrong ’ ; ‘ I suppose these new ideas must be right ’ ; ‘ I suppose we have got to get used to them ’ , etcetera , etcetera . |
| 27 | Unfortunately the bastards are 13 points minus 2 games clear , so they must have been playing well . |
| 28 | He had wondered how the KGB would react to the Reznichenko Memorandum ; now he saw they must have been analysing the pattern long before it had occurred to him . |
| 29 | They must have been unpacking Rice Crispies . |
| 30 | She did not really care whether people listened or not ; she was interested herself in what she was saying , and she was quite happy to potter about from bench to bench watching people writing their diaries when they should have been writing up their experiments . |