Example sentences of "they had been [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Certainly , they could not have studied the group if they had been honest about themselves , but perhaps that just means that there are some social contexts that we can not study . |
| 2 | For a breathspace he saw his own body ; he thought that Taliesin and Fribble had carried it to a settle beneath a window , and he wanted to grasp at them , for they had been dear , good friends , and the knowledge that he would never see them again was scarcely to be borne . |
| 3 | When we consider the essential role of susceptibility it becomes plain that the people who caught a cold in the bus were ‘ ill ’ before they ever stepped onto it , for if they had been healthy they would never have picked up the bugs in the first place . |
| 4 | They came to Bedford from the Luton Public Assistance Institution where they had been assistant master and assistant matron . |
| 5 | I wondered whether Lili would agree that they had been best friends . |
| 6 | They had been two small , quiet people ; he 'd been , at twenty-nine , a gentle kind of man . |
| 7 | Jesus , it was one island , that was true , but the terrain made the halves more remote from each other than if they had been two islands separated by a sea channel : you could n't skip across our jungles and mountains in an outrigger . |
| 8 | In the sixth scene those poor French wretches on the raft were represented in very much the same posture as that in which they had been first delineated by Monsieur Jerricault . |
| 9 | The traffic and the crowds were passing interminably in each direction , as they had been all the time . |
| 10 | Hitherto , they had been subject to largely servile pieces , containing five paragraphs of biographical detail , three to describe the speed of the music ( with at least one simile ) and two humorous asides from Gedge . |
| 11 | As Poles they had been subject to St Petersburg 's longstanding attempts to interfere in relations between Polish nobles and non-Polish peasants . |
| 12 | They knew from their own and others ' research that there was a diminishing prospect for children returning home once they had been long in care . |
| 13 | It they had been right , matrilineal society would tend to have a lower level of technological development while patrilineal societies would have a higher level . |
| 14 | Most Victorian cities had been urban centres since at least the Middle Ages , though of course they had been tiny in comparison with the size they attained in the nineteenth century . |
| 15 | They had been vociferous to the effect that the ‘ tithes should come down ’ and the men should ‘ have higher wages ’ . |
| 16 | The correspondents expressed deep gratitude to Hannah — they were so inspired by her sublimely tranquil and uncomplaining acceptance of the kind of material deprivation considered unacceptable by modern society , so moved by her angelic demeanour and indomitable spirit , that they had been obliged to consider their own situation and concluded that their individual complaints about life were so paltry by comparison that their entire perspective had been changed . |
| 17 | On enquiring of the cause , Susa-no-wo was told they had been obliged to offer their eight daughters , one by one , to the eight-headed dragon of Koshi and it was now the turn of the last daughter . |
| 18 | More importantly They were also recruiting persons whom they had been obliged to make redundant in the face of earlier downturns and who were fully conversant with their own particular operations . |
| 19 | Either they had been obliged to renew such contracts , perhaps several times , and had thus come under pressure to give the workers concerned permanent status , or they had found themselves carrying workers whose fixed-term contracts had not yet expired , despite the fact that they were no longer needed . |
| 20 | There were many more ardent Communists , but ever since the twenties they had been obliged to keep very quiet indeed . |
| 21 | But they had been better than her family . |
| 22 | The Court of Appeal reserved judgment on the challenge by auctioneers Messenger May Baverstock of Guildford to a High Court ruling that they had been negligent in selling for £840 two oil paintings that soon fetched £88,000 at Sotheby 's as works of George Stubbs . |
| 23 | She wished to bring an action against her employers alleging that they had been negligent in failing adequately to protect her against the known risk of injury from this pupil . |
| 24 | These would include claims against the vendor 's professional advisers if they had been negligent in advising on the negotiation of the transaction . |
| 25 | Robbie had no idea how long they had been stationary . |
| 26 | In addition , two female science students who had attended girls ' grammar schools felt that they had been disadvantaged : |
| 27 | They had been close , Mrs. Fanshawe and Mrs. Browne , and there was n't much about the Fanshawes Mrs. Browne had n't known . |
| 28 | They had been close like this before but not at Felipe 's instigation . |
| 29 | As two young married couples they had been close for a time when they lived near Stoke , although Carole had not got on at all well with Amaranth . |
| 30 | Since then they had been awkward in each other 's company and everything seemed to have gone wrong . |