Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] [prep] [noun pl] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Gran had been muttering about storms for days and she liked her to stay close at these times . |
| 2 | He scored another victory recently when the Labour Party abolished the unions ' block vote in the leadership elections , something he had been advocating for ages . |
| 3 | Long 's health had been deteriorating for years , but he had kept open his channels of communication ; like Law his influence was based on years of devotion to the interests of the party , and like Law 's that influence had been used to argue the case for coalition . |
| 4 | When Tom told his grandmother he was moving out of her house and confessed — because since the accident he had also stopped lying , could not be bothered with prevarication — that he had been busking at stations , she told him she was horrified , she was disappointed in him . |
| 5 | We had been looking for tasks that were : |
| 6 | The maypole committee , of which Amos was president , had been looking for ways of raising funds for the May weekend and old folks ' treat ( of which more later ) , the most important weekend in the lives of the villagers . |
| 7 | 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 . |
| 8 | Borough councillors heard yesterday that 1992 is Car Crime Prevention Year and officers had been looking at ways of getting the message across . |
| 9 | I had been looking through Situations Vacant in the local newspaper : ‘ Secretarial assistance required … |
| 10 | Then , towards the end of January , people noticed that at least one boar was coming right up to the village in its nighttime foraging : there were tracks in the snow and patches of scratched earth where it had been digging for roots . |
| 11 | The government had been thinking about ways for the administration to maintain some degree of control over the colonies since the mid-1650s ; in 1675 Charles set up the first organization to establish any record of continuity , a sign that his possessions overseas were settling down into some sort of discernible order . |
| 12 | The former concept had a crucial historical advantage at the birth of mechanics ; Western thinkers approaching things as materials which stay put until the craftsman or builder reaches for them , would not have started trying to measure how the inert is moved by external forces if they had been thinking in terms of inherently active ch'i . |
| 13 | Ianthe , who had been thinking in terms of daffodils and lemon barley water , had not seen herself being so practical . |
| 14 | They first told police they had been hunting for foxes . |
| 15 | She woke early on the morning of July 29 , 1981 which is not surprising as her room overlooked the Mall where the singing , chattering crowds had been gathering for days . |
| 16 | She had been intending for days to make a start on clearing out the cloakroom ; now was the moment — she would make a preliminary survey , set aside what should be kept , see if there was anything good enough for Oxfam . |
| 17 | For months they had been trying with divets and tackle to hoist the appropriate two-ton stone upright and into its hole . |
| 18 | The ancient Egyptians had been trying for centuries to prevent the export of their sacred felines . |
| 19 | Sylvia had been trying for years to overcome her claustrophobia , but with little or no success . |
| 20 | My head was n't really in the right state for assimilating all this stuff , but as far as I could gather , Uncle Rory had been trying for years to come up with something Creative ( his capital , his italics ) . |
| 21 | MIT members were shown , in detail , the market which they had been trying for years to service . |
| 22 | I had been struggling with tears for some time and now I let them flow freely . |
| 23 | Bream , who had been adopted by Mrs Margaret Bream before she married the guitarist , had been drinking with friends at local pubs on the day of the killing . |
| 24 | Mr Wolski knew already that the old eagle had been ailing for months now and that three weeks ago they had finally taken her out of her cage and into the veterinary block to see if there was anything they could do for her . |
| 25 | Others have progressed rapidly in the beginning , only to experience considerable difficulty in overcoming the final hurdle — almost as though the mind was loath to give up a fear to which it had been clinging for years . |
| 26 | Thus flighted , I sent them shooting out over the mud and the water towards their suffocating ends ; then I buried them , using as coffins the big matchboxes we always kept by the stove , and which I had been saving for years and using as toy-soldier containers , model houses and so on . |
| 27 | ‘ 63 teams from all over the UK took part , and it was clear that many had been training for months . |
| 28 | Labourer Jamie Gorrie , 20 , of Horndean , Hants , had been helping with inquiries about his 15-year-old sister , who died 19 days ago . |
| 29 | A previously well 15 year old , who had been living with friends , became acutely violent and confused shortly after his return home . |
| 30 | Her paternal family is opposed to the sect and some years before these events Miss T. had been reunited with her paternal grandmother and her father and for the past two years she had been living in circumstances which would not be approved by the sect . |