Example sentences of "what they [vb past] [adv] been " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | They were thus inspired to assume flower names , and attracted a great deal of attention and interest — precisely , in fact , what they had previously been denied . |
| 2 | She had coaxed , cajoled and bribed the delivery boys to do what they had already been told to do — carry it to the relevant floor of the hotel . |
| 3 | I completed another tour of the mill and cottage , this time with Nigel in tow , trying to sound as objective as I could , as if I , too , saw mere possibilities , but as our tour progressed I could see that Nigel had warmed to it almost as much as I. He pointed out some ‘ interesting features ’ that I had missed , such as some of the wooden working parts of the mill machinery set high in the plastered walls , and told me what they had originally been used for . |
| 4 | She asked Nanny what they had all been talking about as Nanny towelled her dry . |
| 5 | They were now revealed as what they had always been , not figures of fun , not left-wing political extremists , not loony vegetarians ( though they were vegetarians ) , but harmless , mild , Labour-voting , CND-supporting , Fabian pamphlet-reading intellectuals , of a species that Alix now knew to be far from extinct . |
| 6 | Yet , all in all , farming and the farm remained visibly what they had always been in most parts of the world : more prosperous in the developed areas , and hence investing more heavily in improvements , buildings , etc. , more businesslike in many places , but not transformed out of recognition . |
| 7 | By the late 1980s , the attractions of city life were not what they had once been for the peasants . |
| 8 | ‘ Work , ’ she told him quietly , her eyes seeking the dark depths of his for something that would relate to what they had once been to each other in Seville . |