Example sentences of "they had been [v-ing] for " in BNC.

  Next page
No Sentence
1 Bernard and Laura escaped on to their sailing boat for much of the summer , a yacht they had been enjoying for some years now , and they pottered around Mykonos in Greece .
2 By the time Iran had attacked a Kuwaiti , a Saudi and then a Liberian tanker ( the last of these caught near the principal Saudi terminal at Ras Tanura ) , the GCC states had begun to recognize this sequence — as it was doubtless intended — as a signal to distance themselves from Iraq in the light of the support they had been providing for Baghdad .
3 To judge by the clutter of bottles , glasses , and over-filled ashtrays , and the brooding , weary faces , they had been debating for many hours .
4 Fifty miles south-west of the railway line bomb , 13 Platoon of 6 UDR reported in for duty at 0600 ; they had been hoping for a quiet day , in order to catch up on some training .
5 Culdub Oakapple opened his mouth to say that acclaim was all very well in its way , but they had been hoping for something a bit more financial than that , but the two Gnomes on each side of him trod on his foot to stop him , because you could not always trust the Oakapple to be tactful .
6 They had been drinking for the best part of an hour but none were drunk .
7 They had been flying for 16 hours 12 minutes , had survived two bad storms and had flown over 1,800 miles of ocean .
8 They may not have found quite the soulmate in each other that they had been looking for , but their relationship has made up for it in other ways .
9 By searching for flashes repeating at exactly the same rate as the radio pulses , they were able to investigate much fainter pulsations than if they had been looking for pulses occurring at an unknown rate .
10 You may lose some credibility with the clientele if you demolish him or her with a blitzkrieg attack only to find later that they had been looking for the nearest toilet !
11 He realised they had been watching for some minutes before he noticed them .
12 The broad effect of the Act was to enable societies to offer the extended range of services they had been lobbying for .
13 They first told police they had been hunting for foxes .
14 MIT members were shown , in detail , the market which they had been trying for years to service .
15 THEY had been nit-picking for weeks .
16 A judge told William Sim and David Todd that they had been playing for high stakes and had to pay the penalty .
17 Other European countries said that the new British Government would be positive and co-operative and would put forward proposals for bringing about the completion of the European Community , for which they had been working for the past 40 years .
18 They had been preparing for a raid themselves the next day ; a big raid ; five galleys of men , gathered in Arivegaig ready to board the ships in the dawn .
19 ‘ I do n't know what he meant , ’ Allen said after they had been walking for some time on the soft turf at the verge of the track .
20 They had been walking for less than ten minutes when it began to spit .
21 Gloucestershire clothiers in 1756 " laid the chain four or five yards longer on the bar " and stopped altogether an allowance of two shillings the price which they had been paying for " stopping " ( repairing ) the cloth .
22 They had been waiting for them , forewarned , rifles at the ready .
23 For her parents Fran and Les , it was the day they had been waiting for .
24 The parents were outraged ; the managers had got the opportunity they had been waiting for .
25 A crowd of eager customers would be awaiting his arrival outside the shops and attack him for the particular colour , size or style of dress they had been waiting for .
26 There was restrained optimism among Wickham 's team that this could be the lead they had been waiting for .
27 They had been waiting for high water so that they could sail alongside in a civilised manner .
28 Maybe this was the break they had been waiting for .
29 The young revolutionary , whom they had been trailing for sixteen hours a day , was proving less useful than Cowley had hoped , not leading them to any of his more dangerous colleagues .
30 He really did n't think the Revolution was anything more than a few peasants kicking up a fuss , like they had been doing for hundreds of years .
  Next page