Example sentences of "they had [adv] been [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Much of the technology used in the Macintosh came via Xerox 's Palo Alto Research Centre where they had also been investigating page printing technology and methods of transferring complex graphics between screens and the printed page . |
| 2 | They had also been floating in a jar of pickle in the curiobiological museum down in the cellars of Unseen University , since live salamanders were extinct around the Circle Sea . |
| 3 | They had lain dormant for some years after she had left the cottage , but he knew now they had simply been growing in the warm darkness of his being where love bred … |
| 4 | They had clearly been leading up to this all week . |
| 5 | The defendants admitted that they had both been drinking heavily on the night of the offences . |
| 6 | They had both been attending a seminar on judicial sentencing at a northern university , Berowne to open it formally with a brief speech , Dalgliesh to represent the police interest ; and they had travelled by rail in the same first class compartment . |
| 7 | To some degree they had already been catering for children with special needs . |
| 8 | Patients randomised to the tablet groups were advised to continue their pre-trial diets — unless they had already been taking a high fibre diet — in which case they were encouraged to reduce their fibre intake during the trial . |
| 9 | They had even been giving trouble during the morning and had still not been put right . |
| 10 | I was sorry for Jennifer but they had only been going out for a month or so , and not terribly seriously . |
| 11 | I saw the evil light in his eyes and knew that so far they had only been playing with me : their real intent was to kill . |
| 12 | The implication of moral blackmail in robbing patient services to pay nurses remained a ghost at the banquet for the media , and for many nurses , who had still to reconcile the jobs they had perhaps been doing for years with the management 's idea of their responsibilities , and the clinical grade to which they aspired . |
| 13 | It should be added here that the high clergy hardly recognized that they had actually been exercising a political religious power of a specifically sectarian or monopolistic type . |
| 14 | Suddenly , above the shouting , shots and noise of battle , the neighing of horses , creaking wheels and ringing harness , came the sound they had all been dreading : the thin , sharp crackle of ice giving way under strain . |
| 15 | Soon after England began their reply there was a bad-light hold-up — probably unnecessary if they had all been wearing Bolle ‘ lifter ’ lenses — and upon resumption , Gooch and Stewart had to brace themselves against a torrid onslaught from Waqar , menace in every step of his run-up , and Akram , who bounded in and flung down something resembling Ivanisevic 's curving left-handed tennis serve , if only 30mph or so less swift . |
| 16 | This was why they had all been calling him ‘ sir ’ . |
| 17 | They had all been drinking , but she felt safer with them than alone . |
| 18 | I felt betrayed ; I had never thought of all my friends noticing my weight , and that they had all been thinking of me as a fat person . |
| 19 | 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 . |
| 20 | She asked Nanny what they had all been talking about as Nanny towelled her dry . |
| 21 | They had all been working at stone-gathering , keeping their pageant money out of sight for fear the constables mark them as robbers or miracle-workers . |
| 22 | They had all been sitting quietly for some time , waiting . |
| 23 | They had undoubtedly been asking for trouble . |
| 24 | Many companies in the Heavy Electrical Equipment conspiracy did not dismiss ‘ guilty executives ’ ( for they had merely been doing their job ) but even those who did , did not do so with the intention of ruining them . |
| 25 | Harper had been right , they had merely been changing their aim , and now the French gunners concentrated their shots at the centre of the field . |
| 26 | And the form of drug they had indeed been taking — a legal drug , as it happens , called alcohol — is under attack from the surgeon-general . |
| 27 | Then Pike , or Pike 's body anyway , fiopped all over Quigley as if the two of them had just been exchanging bodily fiuids . |
| 28 | She had taken off her coat , somehow contrived to make herself seem a little dishevelled , as though the two of them had just been snogging on the sofa or something . |