Example sentences of "[verb] once [been] [noun] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The independent republic of Honduras had been created a year previously , in 1838 , having once been part of Spanish America ; its fertile coastal plains surround a mountainous interior , rich in forests , and it just manages to have a 40-mile strip of southern coastline on the Pacific to complement its much longer Caribbean seaboard . |
| 2 | They had once been commuters themselves but they had waited so long for trains they had taken to living permanently in the tunnels , skulking in the darkness by day and emerging late at night to devour unwary travellers . |
| 3 | What she did not know was that Moran , with his good looks and military fame , had once been king of these barn dances and now that he had neither youth nor fame would not take a lesser place . |
| 4 | It had once been Chris Patten 's task to help Mrs Thatcher as she worked through the night . |
| 5 | Then , sighing , Charles opened the car door and stepped into the desolation of what had once been Thrush Green rectory . |
| 6 | The principle of " guilt by association " was introduced ; people who had once been members of the Communist Party or a group sympathetic to that party , however long before , were smeared as security risks and their careers ruined . |
| 7 | In one of the firing ranges attached to the foundries Brother Artisans — who had once been hive-dwellers , too , before their transfiguration — introduced the new Necromundans to military bolters , flamers , plasma guns , melta guns , laser weapons . |
| 8 | And it also implies that where there had once been marriage , there was now divorce . |
| 9 | The solidarity and sense of community that had once been Ealing 's strength now began to work against it . |
| 10 | He was a spare aquiline man , who had once been court sculptor ( and perhaps unofficial jester ! ) to a mythical-sounding Ring Zog . |
| 11 | The pair had once been students at the University College of Galway . |
| 12 | As Gilbert 's words faded , he was back at the Unit again , listening to the thing which had once been Dr Bissell as it said … |
| 13 | The story was that there had once been houses on each side of the road but a century or so ago , those on the west had been demolished to add to the parkland . |
| 14 | The big hook which had once been part of a hanging scales was in the shape of the letter S , and sharpened to a point at both ends . |
| 15 | Miss Hannah Hauxwell , dressed in men 's trousers and old jacket so torn that it looked as though savaging by wolf packs had once been part of her daily routine , looked at me mildly . |
| 16 | The confrontation between President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and opposition forces , including those who had once been part of his regime as fellow nationalists , continued throughout October . |
| 17 | Many reasons may be adduced for the Polish uprising of November 1830 : the Russians ' two-year hunt for " Polish Decembrists " ; the tsar 's reluctance to be separately crowned as King of Poland ; the refusal of St Petersburg to attach to the " Congress Kingdom " of Poland the provinces to the east which had once been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ; the emergence of Polish literary figures who " understood romanticism as embodying a patriotic call to restore the old republic within its old frontiers " ; the decline of the Polish economy ; the inspiration of the events of 1830 in France and Belgium ; and the arrest , just before the rising , of a number of militant soldiers and students . |
| 18 | But he bore no malice , and on the way back to the hotel gave me quite a run-down on his cousin Ena , who he said had once been Queen of Spain . |
| 19 | The surviving floors , though , were of clay , which might imply that there had once been plank floors above them . |
| 20 | Theda knew an instant of blinding , devastating hatred of the red-headed woman who had once been Benedict 's love . |
| 21 | Holding my back straight and clutching the plaited strings that had once been reins , I felt as intrepid as Stark , as hardened as Lawrence , as much the explorer as Burckhardt . |
| 22 | silence where there had once been pools |
| 23 | The thing that had once been Bissell laughed again , raw plaster splattering on the tiled floor . |
| 24 | In his room he unpacked the little portable typewriter that had once been Jenny 's and stared at a blank paper until his embarrassment had faded . |
| 25 | She was a nice old soul , but she had once been Sister Hope for twenty years , as she never ceased to inform us . |
| 26 | Tonight , alone and quiet after the eventful day , the shadows seemed to hold ghosts of the past , and there was so much here to remind her that this had once been Elise 's home . |
| 27 | She had once been Heydrich 's secretary and Schellenberg , to whom she was devoted , had inherited her . |
| 28 | Others , serving their time , recalled that they , too , had once been constables . |
| 29 | A few low hovels that had once been homes to river people were now derelict , and an empty building which was once a sailmaker 's and then a barge-builder 's premises now stood empty after its last owner , a steam-traction engineer , foundered in the changing times . |
| 30 | He slept in the night nursery that had once been Alice 's . |