Example sentences of "[vb past] [adv] been the [adj] [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Pavel knew that he 'd not been the best company but then , they had n't been treating this job as anything particularly special . |
| 2 | He had seemed certain to become the first black Tory MP , representing Cheltenham — Norman Tebbit had tipped him as the first black cabinet minister and there 'd even been the odd hint that he might one day inhabit No 10 . |
| 3 | A report published in Le Monde on Sept. 19 noted that Egypt 's earnings from workers overseas had hitherto been the main source of foreign exchange receipts , amounting to over $2,000 million per year , of which $500 million came from workers in Kuwait alone . |
| 4 | It had long been the traditional burial ground of kings ; all Louis 's royal Capetian ancestors — with the exception of his father Philip — were buried within its confines . |
| 5 | However , it is still common to see exchange rates expressed in terms of the dollar , partly because this had long been the accepted practice under the adjustable peg , and also because of the USA 's continuing dominance in the world economy and financial system . |
| 6 | The divorce of mail and telephone ( of which Sweden had long been the main example ( at last in the 1980S became widespread . |
| 7 | The strict controls over our life at school , our terrible school uniform and the climate of East Yorkshire conspired against either of these sexual eventualities , which had apparently been the common run of existence in Trinidad . |
| 8 | At the snowbound alpine inn of Kleine Scheidegg , Kartoffel had not been the only climber to get a taste of the good frau 's favours . |
| 9 | Charles Marovitz in It had not been the only reviewer from the left dissatisfied with the Royal Shakespeare Company 's US on the Vietnam war . |
| 10 | Revolutionary changes in weapon technology had not been the only reason for the reimposition of the Ten-Year Rule . |
| 11 | Crawford had not been the first choice to play Feste , until Colin Graham — who directed him in Benjamin Britten productions was brought in . |
| 12 | She had not been the first woman to offer him a smile during the past few hour . |
| 13 | The care of the sick had not been the main concern of the House of Industry , and early personal records are lacking , but the workhouse master kept a weekly journal , the earliest entry in which is dated April 23rd 1842 . |
| 14 | Shiva had called it that , but in his mouth it had not been the hackneyed expression it would have been if an English person had so referred to it . |
| 15 | Although , in referring to the possibility that serfdom might " abolish itself from below " , the tsar seemed to be responding to the rural disturbances which had resulted from Nicholas 's militia creations , in all probability he simply lifted the phrase from a Third Department report of 1839 whose purpose , though reformist , had hardly been the complete transformation of government policy . |
| 16 | Until I arrived , he had always been the smallest person in the country ( he was about ten metres tall ) . |
| 17 | But in the folklore of Liverpool Police it was the ‘ bucks ’ who had always been the primary object of street powers . |
| 18 | She had always been the great friend of Noreen 's and of Liam too in his young days . |
| 19 | That had always been the constitutional position , he said , but the big demonstrations of the past few days had proved that he had a popular mandate too . |
| 20 | Staveley GC shed had always been the local dumping ground for withdrawn and stored locos from the Sheffield area . |
| 21 | In fact it had always been the last thing on his mind . |
| 22 | She could not imagine that she had ever been the first person . |
| 23 | It had once been the great hall of the castle , and is among the fairest buildings of the twelfth century which Britain possesses . |
| 24 | He was reduced to a short old man who had once been the great painter Marius Durance . |
| 25 | During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the pace of Mediterranean commercial life slackened and the inland sea , which had once been the major artery of European trade , became a cul-de-sac . |
| 26 | The one which had once been the spare room she now occupied permanently . |
| 27 | Where he drove , surrounded by cars and bicycles and mopeds and minibuses , there had once been the strained drone of Dakotas pulling gliders into the air for the flights to the bridges and crossroads behind the D-Day beaches of Normandy , and for the flights to the Dutch town of Arnhem . |
| 28 | The book she was reading had once been the physical barrier between her and her mother . |
| 29 | The animal had been plunging towards the shelter of a riverside bamboo grove when he fired and it had probably been the best shot of his life . |
| 30 | He had also been the Peronist candidate in the 1983 presidential elections , losing to Raúl Alfonsín Foulkes of the Radical Party ( UCR ) [ see pp. 32717-18 ] . |