Example sentences of "they had [adv] been [prep] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | ‘ This morning you discovered they had n't been with Peter Leary as they 'd told us . |
| 2 | Probably they had n't been on stage more than half a dozen times before they were put under this microscope . |
| 3 | They would n't have put that on if they had n't been on drugs ! |
| 4 | Yeah , they had n't been in hospital for a few years , they have n't , I 've never known to go in . |
| 5 | Rufus put up two or three names , one being of someone they had both been at school with . |
| 6 | On the whole , they had either been through the English education system and had therefore a good command of English and a limited domestic register in their other languages , or they had been educated abroad and learnt their English as adults when they arrived in this country . |
| 7 | The militia lost heart at this news ; they had already been on duty for a month , and had been treated with extraordinary meanness by the citizens they were defending , who , they complained , ‘ would not even allow straw for the poor men to lay upon ’ while ‘ some were eight , some seven , and all six nights and days under arms upon the walls ’ . |
| 8 | The chronicler Roger of Wendover wrote that at the Council of Oxford in 1227 , ‘ the King caused to be cancelled and annulled all the charters of liberties of the forest , although they had already been in force in the whole realm for two years ’ : the earls who rebelled in July were said to have compelled the king to restore the charters by the threat of armed force . |
| 9 | The " ceremonious stomachs " of Russian ambassadors " whose Nation stands so much on Ceremony " were the subject of comment in England in the early years of the century , as they had already been in the reign of Elizabeth . |
| 10 | After 1983 , the ‘ frontiers of the state ’ were , in this respect at least , rolled back as they had not been since 1945 . |
| 11 | Fitzormonde and Mowbray had always been soft , they could whine and moan that they had not been to blame , but Horne had agreed to Whitton 's plan and built a thriving business on the proceeds . |
| 12 | Although a rich resource for trivialisation by the media , the women 's movement in the 1970s succeeded in making issues to do with women 's rights visible in ways they had not been for over sixty years . |
| 13 | If they had not been in the habit of seeing each other so often , at least once a week and sometimes more , talking on the phone every day , that appalling suggestion might have driven a bolt through their friendship , eventually destroying it . |
| 14 | ‘ Why , my lord , when we were left alone — and I think if they had not been in such haste to move on they would not have left a man of us alive to tell the tale — we first tended the worst hurt , and took counsel , and decided we must take the news on to Ramsey , and also back here to Shrewsbury . |
| 15 | Finally , some teachers did not return the questionnaire because they had not been in the school at the time of the review and felt that their knowledge of SSE as a general notion was too limited even to enable them to complete the section on general attitudes . |
| 16 | Nevertheless , it seems fair to say that by the 1530s social grievances were again being voiced to an extent that they had not been in the previous century . |
| 17 | They had never been on Scottish waters before and planned to go round Skye . |
| 18 | Living amongst the Indonesians , where the pursuit of wisdom virtually amounts to a national pastime , the elements of Earth , Air , Fire , Water and Ether became real for me in a way they had never been in the writings of the Gnostics or the Pythagoreans . |
| 19 | Then railways appeared and canal owners realised too late they had really been in the business of transportation . |
| 20 | They were marching behind the others with great dignity , accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behaviour . |
| 21 | Yet , all in all , farming and the farm remained visibly what they had always been in most parts of the world : more prosperous in the developed areas , and hence investing more heavily in improvements , buildings , etc. , more businesslike in many places , but not transformed out of recognition . |
| 22 | By the late 1980s , the attractions of city life were not what they had once been for the peasants . |
| 23 | ‘ Work , ’ she told him quietly , her eyes seeking the dark depths of his for something that would relate to what they had once been to each other in Seville . |
| 24 | The Alpine snows closed over his militant steps , and the sinners he had excommunicated for one reason or another turned their thoughts from irregular union or simony , if they had ever been on them , and peered into the mists of what promised to be a very long vacancy . |
| 25 | ‘ Friends , many of them believers , came up afterwards and said it was the most beautiful funeral they had ever been to . |
| 26 | Nick 's friends wrote that it was the best party they had ever been to , a truly unforgettable occasion . |
| 27 | For a while my self-loathing and judgement of self went deeper than they had ever been in my life . |
| 28 | Maggie was shown into a very expensive flat that overlooked the river and she had one of her rare glimpses of the owner as he stood with his back to a roaring fire and regarded her through eyes that were just as sharp as they had ever been in his youth . |
| 29 | He said he had thought they had all been fighting on the German side because they had all been under a German commander when surrendering . |
| 30 | They did not pause on her arrival , though Alix , ever polite , waved obliquely to welcome her back : watching them , it occurred to Liz that perhaps in all the years they had all known one another , this was one of the very few occasions on which they had all been in the same room . |