Example sentences of "the [adj] [noun] had be [v-ing] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The tall man had been leaning against the stable 's open gates , but straightened up as Lucille appeared from the house . |
| 2 | The eight-year-old Ian had been talking in class all through a painting lesson . |
| 3 | At least the Spanish authorities had been conducting a professional search . |
| 4 | The upturn in sales was double the increase the economic forecasters had been expecting , but the City remained sceptical . |
| 5 | Concern that this uncontrolled expansion of the private sector had been siphoning off funds that might have been more cost effectively used in home based community care led to the government commissioning reviews of resource management and quality of care . |
| 6 | The embattled Chancellor had been hoping for a public show of loyalty from the Prime Minister . |
| 7 | By contrast , the Scottish Tories had been lobbying to keep the maximum personal element . |
| 8 | The unemployed electrician had been living with girlfriend Andrea McCardle at the flat in Lee Park Drive , Belle Vale , for two years . |
| 9 | Not surprisingly the British economy had been growing at only about half the average annual rate of 5.4 per cent for the EEC countries since 1953 . |
| 10 | While John Paul Jones had been captivating the ladies of Paris the French government had been preparing for the most serious attack on England since the Dutch incursion into the Medway . |
| 11 | Perhaps the old gods had been listening , when she 'd made her wish at the Trevi Fountain . |
| 12 | 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 . |
| 13 | In their view , the old party had been doing well . |
| 14 | For a long time the industrious Bavarians had been preparing for such an attack . |
| 15 | Whitlock suddenly noticed that a member of the Zimbalan mission had been watching them . |
| 16 | They ended up laughing about that , but it was the uneasy laughter of desperation and displacement , and all they could do after that was finish the whisky and have the joint Rory had been working on , and it was almost a relief when Fergus was sick as a dog out of the window , hanging out barfing onto the slates and into the guttering while Rory tried to clean the plaster off the top bunk and stowed the guns out of harm 's way . |
| 17 | She claimed she and the murdered girl had been drinking with the old man , and that he had killed her friend , but the old man was acquitted and McLachlan was sentenced to hang . |
| 18 | For more than two weeks prior to Oct. 29 , the Central Bank had been selling an estimated US$50,000,000 in gold each day , in efforts to keep down the gold price ( and thereby to hold down the black-market dollar rate , whose divergence from the official rate provided a barometer of business confidence ) . |
| 19 | The cooperative movement had been going through the same process , and every week was being confronted by the same forces which had compelled trade unionists to consolidate their forces . |
| 20 | ‘ Curiously enough the reduction in low level concentrations of sulphur dioxide , resulted in an increase in the frequency of detections and complaints about fish smells because the acidic gases had been reacting with and neutralising the smell of the amines ’ . |
| 21 | Last night , very little was known about what the three men had been doing . |
| 22 | For the past half-hour the little man had been giggling to himself as he stropped a Buck knife razor-sharp on the inside of his belt . |
| 23 | The critically-ill youngster had been staying with various people after walking out of home following rows with her stepfather John . |
| 24 | One training organisation , which had taken a twenty three percent cut in funds in 1990 ninety one , had to take a further twenty percent cut this year , and the people who are worst affected by these cuts were the very people that the Tory Party had been crying crocodile tears over for so long . |
| 25 | As Maisie and Mr Malik 's relative were clearing away the destruction ( the Huysan twins had been having a mashed-potato fight with school spoons ) , he made his way up to the headmaster 's study . |
| 26 | On the way back from No. 6 Commando positions to Brigade H.Q the road was busy with Jeeps ferrying the wounded from the area where the Black Watch had been attacking the German positions . |
| 27 | The present rendezvous had been riding high on my chart of dreads . |
| 28 | Among the former are many participles , both present and past : ( 26 ) the watching crowd started to laugh he was greeted by smiling well-wishers the injured man had been feeding the orang-utan but participles do not exhaust the possibilities : ( 27 ) the angry bartender slammed the drink down five empty tumblers were standing by his elbow Notice , too , the clear ambiguity of : ( 28 ) a flashing light as meaning either a light which is flashing on some particular occasion , or one which normally has this characteristic . |
| 29 | Levels of intermarriage , in the first place , varied considerably from republic to republic and from nationality to nationality ; and although the proportion of ethnically mixed families at the national and republican level might have been increasing , it did not necessarily follow that the incidence of intermarriage between each of the major nationalities had been increasing at a similar rate . |
| 30 | No one could say how long the elderly woman had been lying lifeless in her home , but the authorities told reporters she had apparently not responded to calls since before Hallowe'en . |