Example sentences of "[pron] used [prep] [be] [art] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | I used to be a professional cleaner — I do n't want to get her into any trouble , I … ’ |
| 2 | 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 . |
| 3 | and he 's saying he 'll marry her and then of course Acky he and he says you know , er A Acky you know , and I used to be a male nurse you know , and John says aye , John |
| 4 | Before I used to be a real reader ; but here there was not one book in the house . |
| 5 | I 've given it up because I used to be a cheesaholic . |
| 6 | ‘ I used to be the black sheep of the family , ’ he said . |
| 7 | ‘ Also , I used to be an up-market wino and after nine months ’ sobriety , I realise what I 'm doing at present is not very fulfilling . |
| 8 | Much of this shift is due to the reduction in pre-marital conceptions , which used to be a major precipitating factor in marriage ( Britton 1980 ) . |
| 9 | 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 . |
| 10 | And just to cap all this mythological irrelevance , the island of Vulcano is now linked by a small spit of land to another small volcano , Vulcanello , which used to be a separate island , and it has been suggested that this pair comprised the ‘ Scylla and Charybdis ’ , beloved of Homer and modern politicians , but then so have several other island pairs in the Mediterranean . |
| 11 | Funding delays are the latest controversy to surround the building , which used to be a busy shopping centre off Skinnergate . |
| 12 | Much of it is in the middle of the Pacific , you see , which used to be a common area but the only people who could , at the moment , have the technology to tap those resources are the very advanced states so there is a dispute about the right to develop those or not . |
| 13 | It is a handsome conversion and gives a catholic flavour to a street which used to be the exclusive preserve of contemporary Western art . |
| 14 | They 'd bought this enormous house , Four Winds , which used to be the local manor or something . |
| 15 | Some of these names represent principalities and have a political significance ; others are simply regional tags which identify the surrounding population , for example the Solland in the far south , which used to be an independent realm but which is now part of Wissenland . |
| 16 | It is , of course , pathetic that a man who used to be a raging republican should turn into a slavering royal poodle , just as it is sad that his economic and political principles should have become as unrecognisable as the Welsh rugby team . |
| 17 | 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 . |
| 18 | She used to be a good cunt , now she was a dressful of dead fishmeat . |
| 19 | She used to be an old singer , I do n't know any of her songs , but I just know she was an old singer . |
| 20 | You used to be a whole sack of them ! |
| 21 | 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 . |
| 22 | Where there used to be a great big island . |
| 23 | Er and then I 'll tell you then when was in the er on Square and of course this council house as what this council house what 's built now , it was n't there then , it used to be different council house , there used to be a great big archway . |
| 24 | There used to be a great line of business up the folder part . |
| 25 | 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 . |
| 26 | There used to be a rack-and-pinion railway between Funchal , Monte and Terreiro da Luta . |
| 27 | A feller Thom — at Langham Street Gate , there used to be a tremendous number of Ellerman boats coming in — oranges and so on — tremendous amount thrown away because they were bad . |
| 28 | There used to be a long table and the head used to sit at the end of this table and so to see that you did n't leave off working she used to get the table cloth and always be pulling this table straight . |
| 29 | There used to be a round dining table here — mahogany , was n't it ? — and a sideboard along that wall . ’ |
| 30 | History tells us that as far back as the 12th century , there used to be a fortified castle here . |