Example sentences of "[modal v] [adv] have been [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The first four should perhaps have been Giants , although the number of good female reads is a bit too heavy in April . |
| 2 | The daring actions of slaters , copper and lead and iron miners were described , bringing to life those now deserted valleys throughout the centre of the area which must once have been hives of industry . |
| 3 | Sometime she felt so fond of him that she inclined to a belief in reincarnation , feeling that they must once have been twins : she understood him far too well for her peace of mind , and she knew why her brothers detested him ; apart from the fact that they were racists , they were baffled by his charm and his after-shave . |
| 4 | None of these people should ever have been prisoners of conscience . |
| 5 | There must also have been readers who were led to reflect on Othello 's self-righteous murder of Desdemona , and to reflect that Shakespeare 's play expresses a view of mixed marriages which is both encouraging and discouraging . |
| 6 | Besides Irish Mail and her stable mate Montalban we were delighted to welcome back a regular visitor in Peter Pan , the immaculate Wren Class Kerr Stuart of Graham Morris , while the show stopper must surely have been Chaloner , the vertical-boilered locomotive by De Winton from Leighton Buzzard Railway . |
| 7 | You know , he should n't have been king . |
| 8 | It was an important fight , and she should n't have been conce with petty pickings like the hymn-singers . |
| 9 | In that same summer , however , occurred the incident involving the Hurufis , to be described shortly , in which Fahreddin Acemi is clearly shown to be acting as Mufti ; and he must therefore have been Mufti at the time of Molla Arab 's putative association with him . |
| 10 | There may or may not have been divisions of opinion in the ranks of the progressive Alliance , but the Conservatives were all too evidently engaged in fratricidal strife . |
| 11 | Accordingly it would catch persons who may not have been customers of the plaintiff at the time when the defendant left his employment but who had become customers subsequently . |
| 12 | Neither do I think it altogether heretical to wonder whether some diseases attributed to evil spirits may not have been forms of mental illness . |
| 13 | The press had been given nothing but ‘ blurry , distorted photographs culled from television shots of occasions in the past at which North happened to be present ’ ; at best , ABC News had shown ‘ pictures of the back of a man 's head that may or may not have been North 's as the man got into an Embassy car in Cyprus on the occasion of the homeward flight of one of the hostages ’ . |
| 14 | When we arrive there 's a three inch pile of mail on the floor , the day 's diary overruns one of the computer screens and the breakfast table is set with grapefruit , muesli , cereals , Frank Cooper 's marmalade and a vase of flowers that may or may not have been pinks . |
| 15 | It may not have been love at first sight — winged ears and gangly legs have limited appeal — but their relationship was meant to be |
| 16 | ‘ You 'll do for me , I 've always voted Labour , ’ said the fan , who may or may not have been colour blind . |
| 17 | But these relationships may not have been partnerships in any of the senses that the word is used today . |
| 18 | Altogether I probably interviewed about five hundred persons ( members , parents , deprogrammers , anti-cultists , media etc ) , but not all these interviews were conducted in a systematic way — that is to say , they were with people with whom I happened to make contact , and may not have been representative of the Unification population as a whole . |
| 19 | It may just have been coincidence , but since the A1GSM went in , I have had no trouble at all with fish ailments . |
| 20 | In the morning she wondered if her inspection of the villa 's water-works might not have been part of a dream and looked carefully to confirm that the letter to Signora Kettering was still in her handbag . |
| 21 | On the other hand , " the author of Macbeth " is a non-rigid designator , because the author of Macbeth might not have been Shakespeare . |
| 22 | She even wondered if it might not have been Mandy 's laughter-filled anecdotes about summers at the lodge that had coaxed this deep ache of loss within her to the surface of her consciousness . |
| 23 | Among the crowd there were heroes of the late war and some who might not have been heroes then but were prepared to be so now . |
| 24 | But it might just have been anxiety . |
| 25 | The colourless liquid in the glass she carried might just have been water , perhaps ; but whatever it was she seemed unwontedly sober . |
| 26 | There was the dark-eyed , slant-featured look of the ancient lost Royal Houses of Ireland in several of them , the glossy hair that might easily have been fur in others . |
| 27 | There was a transparent sachet of something brown and thick , chocolate paste or miso ; one dried-up anchovy in an open tin , its coat of salt dried to a hard crust ; and a smear of something on a saucer that might once have been pesto sauce . |
| 28 | So I walked beneath the trees and found just under my feet pieces of old concrete and what might once have been bits of wall . |
| 29 | They left behind them a mouldering group of small loft buildings whose interior columns might once have been ships ' masts . |
| 30 | He landed in a heap of what might once have been straw . |