Example sentences of "had do be [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | All they had done was to pick ears of corn as they walked along , rub them in their hands and eat the grain . |
| 2 | And what she had done was to flee to Scarborough on the back of Wilkie 's motorbike . |
| 3 | All he thought he had done was to assemble a collection of his favourite songs . |
| 4 | All the 1957 Act had done was to create certain criminal offences , none of which were of any direct assistance to the taxpayer because they were not themselves in direct conflict with the Finance Act 1964 . |
| 5 | What Chaplin the showman had done was to create a great screen clown , a clown whose frame of reference was to be emotion rather than politics . |
| 6 | What Hornung had done was to take his brother-in-law 's famous detective , Sherlock Holmes , and put him on the wrong side of the law ; a friendly dedication acknowledged the debt . |
| 7 | One good thing she had done was to point out two women pushing articles up under their coats without paying . |
| 8 | On the one hand what the gay movement had done was to involve me in a very intense one-to-one relationship , a couple relationship , and at the same time the ideology that the movement was instilling in me was away from the idea of couple relationships and away from the idea that sex should be conventionally tied to relationships or a single relationship . |
| 9 | All they had done was to try to live an ordinary private life in South Africa with the dignity that we all take for granted , ’ says Gerrard . |
| 10 | Upon the facts the decision seems to have been correct so far as the rule in Rylands v. Fletcher goes , for all that the defendant had done was to plough up some forest land on which there had previously been no thistles but from which , for some unexplained reason , an immense crop of them sprang up in two successive years . |
| 11 | ‘ What we had done was to manufacture this and other statistical indices to allow us to prove our point and push a particular policy line , irrespective of the economic realities of the country , ’ says Budhoo , who claims that such ‘ errors ’ were commonplace within the Fund . |
| 12 | After dropping off my bags , all we had to do was to return the cab . |
| 13 | In our own ignorance all we thought we had to do was to educate these people so ERA also established a ‘ health task force ’ . |
| 14 | I advised Andrew Stavanger to have nothing to do with it — as he was the controlling shareholder in the shipping company , all he had to do was to say no . |
| 15 | All I had to do was to ferry myself out to her in the inflatable dinghy , with a jerrican of water and a bag of fresh vegetables , eggs , and some rashers of bacon . |
| 16 | It meant that all one had to do was to go on contacting enough people and one would make the necessary sales . |
| 17 | All they had to do was to take the bung out of the barrel , top off the level until they were ready to move them . |
| 18 | All he had to do was to put his head forward and up , instead of pulling it back and down , and his problem would be solved . |
| 19 | Melanie realised , now , that she had never needed an invitation to listen to his dancing music ; all she had to do was to open the door and walk in . |
| 20 | All she had to do was to confirm what |
| 21 | The first thing we had to do was to repent of our childish attitude . |
| 22 | The court did not inquire into the nature of his departure from the instructions , and said that as a quasi-arbitrator all he had to do was to act honestly . |
| 23 | All you had to do was to hold up the negotiations until I got desperate and then bully me into authorizing the Japanese deal on the pretext of raising money to pay for my release ! |
| 24 | And to solve Dr Tariq 's problems all he had to do was to find two traitors . |
| 25 | In James Watson 's account ( 1970 ) of the discovery of the structure of DNA — where the non-scientist expects to find strictly-controlled and logically-sequenced reasoning — there is an element of play : ‘ All we had to do was to construct a set of molecular models and begin to play ’ ( ibid . |
| 26 | Perhaps the Gaskells behaved like outsiders but the community was there , ready and open to them ; all they had to do was to slip into the place that was offered . |
| 27 | Waste from animals was a valuable fertiliser — all you had to do was to plough it into the land . |
| 28 | On top was the Queen with Princess Anne in a pushchair and Paul McCartney as Dad , and here was one I had near the beginning about being in a space-ship — Brian and me were weightless and floating around , and what we had to do was to get some stability by getting hold of this firework , a sort of Catherine wheel that was going round and round and showering sparks in our faces , so we closed our eyes and a fire-fanged beast roared flames at us and burned a hole in the space-ship and I fell , still with my eyes tight shut , out into the bottomless black void . |
| 29 | All Paul Manville had to do was to get out of this immediate mess . |
| 30 | I mean I 've known wives er having bicycles ready in the , in the corridors of the house , where all the man had to do was to get his trousers on , if he was asleep in bed , she would come and open the front door , put him on his bike and away he went . |