Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] [adv] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The only way this impinged on the message Macmillan had been taking up to the generals in the front-line was that they might now have to prepare even more urgently for military operations to reinforce allied policy . |
| 2 | Perhaps she had been taking too little care , or perhaps it was the strain of the bereavement coming out in physical symptoms . |
| 3 | So that national er budget that had been accumulating over , over twenty thirty years just basically vanished . |
| 4 | Robert had returned from Italy where he had been serving ever since he had been commissioned eighteen months before . |
| 5 | He had been swinging in and out of consciousness for several days . |
| 6 | I tried all the channels from 1 to 40 in case the hijackers had been messing about with the rig in the truck , but still got nothing . |
| 7 | The one she had n't seen for twelve years , had been ranting about , who never raised a finger to help and left it all to Nancy ? |
| 8 | The rest of the breakfasters , who had been gazing on with fascination , returned also to their newspapers , with the exception of Fishbane , on whom Gooseneck now turned . |
| 9 | Screams rang out from the galleries , where spectators had been gazing down instead of hiding . |
| 10 | Carol had been gazing gloomily at the lake . |
| 11 | Corbett had been snooping there and seized a juicy morsel , first visiting his old friend at St Bartholomew 's and then the poisoner in Faltour 's Lane . |
| 12 | The aim was to ensure that subjects had been fixating correctly by requiring them to report this digit immediately prior to recalling the stimulus . |
| 13 | She had been listening slightly spellbound to this smooth recital , and now she said , ‘ How far can you go ? ’ |
| 14 | Carrie had been listening intently , enthralled and hanging on to the union man 's every word , but she suddenly caught sight of Fred standing at the counter . |
| 15 | He had been listening carefully . |
| 16 | Matilda , who had been listening closely , said , ‘ But daddy , that 's even more dishonest than the sawdust . |
| 17 | I put the phone down , wondering how many people had been listening in on the extensions , and went back into my room . |
| 18 | He had been listening in . |
| 19 | It had been lashing down when they 'd gone in . |
| 20 | Since she had been drifting luxuriously into sleep , it took a second for the voice to register , but when it did , it acted like a bucket of ice-cold water flung over her sun-warmed limbs , and she jack-knifed upright , her eyes wide with shock . |
| 21 | He had been drifting back and forth between the two ever since . |
| 22 | Crimean Tatars had been drifting back to their former homeland since 1987 , and a June 1988 central government ruling confirmed their right to residency [ see p. 36036 ] . |
| 23 | He was expecting a visit from the young woman he had been wooing assiduously and he had carefully orchestrated the evening so that all his housemates were out and he had the house to himself . |
| 24 | It was noticeably warm , as if it had been hiding somewhere snug . |
| 25 | And when they had been hiding out in Tom Rooney 's house , they had still fallen into the roles of master and maid , and on board ship Patrick 's attitude , influenced by Tom 's warning , had been stand-offish . |
| 26 | He had been hiding out , sleeping rough , until three days ago when he arrived in Paris to look up another man indebted to him . |
| 27 | Well if he was there and you came along well that 's two people , so it 's not that secluded , okay , so we have to look on the positive side , if at the end of the day you 're going to get to a situation where , okay , you can see that the ordinary erm true blue course of events is just not gon na work , then it 's down to you , you have then got to make up your own mind what you 're going to do for the casualty and your own safety , okay , if somebody had been bleeding that long and you could n't of got help for them , what would your priority now probably be ? |
| 28 | It must have felt lonely when a respected customer ( whose name was not exposed even to me ) dropped from under her coat the bag of flour she had been concealing there . |
| 29 | But it is a mistake , surely , to think of emotive meaning as a form of meaning in that most important sense of meaning in which we ask what someone meant by saying something , or what he would have meant if he had been speaking properly . |
| 30 | His former colleague had been speaking loudly , and his talk was treasonable . |