Example sentences of "[vb mod] [prep] [be] a [adj] " in BNC.

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No Sentence
1 it must of been a long
2 when I went down there , there must of been a winding me up but the only problem was that er , it was all into er one thirty but er but I mean after you went out I took Thomas out on the road
3 Oh I yeah , he got this , this er must of been a good metal detector you know
4 I suppose I can understand it now , I mean it must of been a lovely place , and then to have all these new houses going up you know , but erm , I mean there was some lovely , lovely lanes
5 I , I , I was lucky in the three ground I went too the worst that ever happened to me was I was put head first into a dustbin , but luckily it had been emptied it was still well mucky , but I just fucking went and had a shower , and I come out of the shower and I 'd got pounced upon again and I was there , it must of been a funny site , there 's me right in just a pair of fucking deck chairs that we used to wear for the , the shower block right , fucking shaving , er like the wash kit bag in my right hand and I was holding me fucking towel round , round me waist with me left , I was streaking across the play ground , going as fast as I could
6 The first form talked about it more than any one else , of course they squealed with laughter when they saw the poor Mary Lou Manselle and Gwendoline , all falling victims to the same spider , jolly clever spider said Irene , it means the only three people in the form that it that would be scared of it , I take my hat off to that spider , ca n't think why it chose my desk said Mary Lou , no , that was a shame said Gwendoline , poor Mary Lou it must of been an awful shock for you when you saw it , I wonder who put it there ?
7 the laws of that could of been an important element of competition
8 Even I can remember there used to be a narrow strip of sand , winding along between the stones , Ruth thought ; it was n't a total waste of time , bringing our buckets and spades here when we were kids .
9 Perming highlighted or coloured hair used to be a definite no-no but it 's now possible to have colour and curls .
10 Five years ago the northern peninsula , Jaffna , used to be a cosy place , with neatly kept houses and well-maintained streets .
11 There used to be a woman sergeant in [ place ] who used to refer to the reserve men as ‘ dick-head reserve men ’ , ‘ fucking idiots ’ , till one day this reserve man says to her , ‘ See that man over there , before he came to this job he was a aircraft technician , [ name ] used to be a chief mechanic .
12 This used to be a regular sight in the village of Bloxham , near Banbury .
13 The Icelanders called one of their finest gushers of boiling water and steam Geysir , and this name was applied subsequently to all those depressing pieces of gas-fired plumbing which used to be a familiar part of the British bathroom scene .
14 The idiosyncratic corncrake , whose remarkable rasping call used to be a familiar country sound , has suffered a collapse in numbers because of modern farming methods .
15 They work with children who have behavioural and/or learning problems in school , administering tests ( traditional IQ testing used to be a central part of the job , but it is becoming less important ) and designing remedial work in conjunction with teachers .
16 ‘ There used to be a good chippy down the back of Albert Street .
17 She used to be a good cunt , now she was a dressful of dead fishmeat .
18 ‘ He used to be a good cop . ’
19 It used to be a good town for the hides trappers brought down out of the hills , but that trade is gone now , along with many another .
20 He argued , convincingly , that noun phrases taken as a whole may quite often have a different temporal assignment from that of the verb which they accompany , as in : ( 37 ) I used to be a good friend of the police chief The underlined phrase may be understood as past relative to the time of utterance ( and hence in agreement with the time indicated by the verb ) or as present ; the two different time-values correspond to the two different continuations in : ( 38 ) … before he joined the force … until he was shot for corruption The first continuation would be compatible with an expansion of the subject phrase to the man who is the police chief , while the second would support the man who was the police chief .
21 Thursday used to be a good night in the paper for motors .
22 I used to be a professional cleaner — I do n't want to get her into any trouble , I … ’
23 Husband John used to be a professional boxer … and has beaten former heavyweight champ Joe Bugner on more than one occasion .
24 He used to be a professional sailor before an accident meant he lost the use of his legs , but he 's still able to pursue the sport he loves .
25 On a piece of rocky coastline and out of what used to be a quaint old fishing village , has sprung one of the liveliest resorts in Corfu .
26 It used to be a bloody do-it-yourself shop !
27 There is Barnabas , who used to be a rich , landowning Cypriot Levite : Symeon , called ‘ Swarthy ’ , who seems to have been a Negro ; Lucius of Cyrene , no doubt a Jew from the dispersion in North Africa ; Manaen , who was educated in court circles alongside Herod the tetrarch ; and Saul of Tarsus , the Jew from the Levant who had studied under Gamaliel .
28 He used to be right out here Frank , he used to be a right paunch
29 You looked at the streets of your home province and you exclaimed , ‘ We used to be a spotless people , sweeping , polishing , tidying , setting things in order .
30 As Gloucester used to be a major droving centre , there was inevitably much crossing with various Welsh types and the Gloucester 's slender , white , dark-tipped horns , spreading quite wide and tilting upwards at the tip , are often similar in style to those of the Welsh , though more refined and a little shorter .
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