Example sentences of "had [be] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Or it could be argued that the abbots had been merciful : that they had allowed slaves to become serfs . |
| 2 | The belief grew that the original patination had been black , possibly based on some rather oblique remarks in Pliny 's Natural History on treating bronzes with bitumen . |
| 3 | But that had been seven months ago , a chill morning in mid-February , when the bushes which screened the canal walk from the neighbouring council estate had been tangled thickets of lifeless thorn ; when the branches of the ash trees had been black with buds so tight that it seemed impossible they could ever crack into greenness ; and the thin denuded wands of willow , drooping over the canal , had cut delicate feathers on the quickening stream . |
| 4 | But would the story have been told in quite the same way if I had been black , or a woman , or nearer their own age and social background ? |
| 5 | There had been black bitterness , and there had been a great aching void for longer than she cared to remember now . |
| 6 | Britain , it seemed , had been black and white . |
| 7 | Mr Browning wrote to thank her for her diligence and in doing so confirmed what she had been certain of , that Miss Henrietta had died . |
| 8 | As a boy , he had been certain that he was adopted , or that his mother had taken a lover . |
| 9 | He was also the one good horse Kelly had been certain to ride — while Bill owned him . |
| 10 | Old Asshe had liked him , he had been certain , and should have welcomed him as a son-in-law ; but evidently no man in the world was to be permitted to fill that position . |
| 11 | She had tried to disembarrass herself of her virginity , and had been certain , once she started ‘ going steady ’ with Sebastian , that this would be accomplished . |
| 12 | I read throughout the night , glancing at the bed from where , earlier the same day , I had been certain Francis was watching me . |
| 13 | He had been thirty-two in 1970 ; there had been certain events that were crucial to his life . |
| 14 | Jehan had been certain before he had asked the question that Jehana did not intend to go through with the match . |
| 15 | For some time now he had been certain that he had at last evolved a diction appropriate both to the requirements of classical epic and to the subtleties of the alchemical process . |
| 16 | There had been certain problems with the agency concerned due to political pressure . |
| 17 | She was highly delighted , especially when she learned that she had been the only woman called for interview ; she had been certain that the job would go to one of the male applicants . |
| 18 | And , while she was chewing on that , suddenly some fierce Czech expletive rent the air , then , ‘ Hell , did you have me fooled ! ’ he raged , and when she had been certain that his fury was wholly on account of her pretending to be a journalist when she was not , he proceeded to throw her thinking totally out of gear when , his face whiter than ever , ‘ You wanted that interview so badly you were even ready to commit adultery to get — ’ |
| 19 | Now , she knew that it had not been a hallucination , it had been real . |
| 20 | And that judgement of mine is as much universalizable , as binding on my future judgements about relevantly similar cases , as if the example had been real rather than merely imaginary . |
| 21 | It makes you more mine than if there 'd been others or if your marriage had been real . " |
| 22 | The people I had seen , the sounds I had heard , and that vile smell , had been real , not supernatural ; what was not real was the absence of any visible machinery — no secret rooms , nowhere to disappear — or of any motive . |
| 23 | That moment in the courtyard when their eyes had met had been real after all ! |
| 24 | ‘ It was because I could n't stop myself , because I was driven by the need to know if what I 'd felt in Sintra had been real and still existed . |
| 25 | If these had been real Tag Heuer watches they 'd have been worth thousands , but in fact at around 25 pounds each they 're a rip-off . |
| 26 | It had been an end , where Jay had yearned to be sure — had been sure ? what a fool believes ? — it would be a beginning . |
| 27 | Until then , he had been sure of his memories , certain that he could not have forgotten his parents and everything that had happened to him and reinvented the whole of his life before he woke in the attic . |
| 28 | Because no one had been sure of what to do , since there was no prescribed etiquette , the leading members of the Household had decided that a small , but ‘ Imperial ’ dinner-party was the answer . |
| 29 | Inwardly I had a sneaking admiration for them because they had been sure that they did n't like the Legion and so had acted directly and left . |
| 30 | He had been wildly ambitious and intensely purposeful ; he had been sure of his own worth , and determined to succeed . |