Example sentences of "[vb past] be [noun pl] [prep] [adj] [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ We 'd been friends for 30 years but ‘ discovered ’ each other when Misia became a widow . |
| 2 | They 'd been friends for some time when I first knew them but I did n't realise how long . |
| 3 | They 'd been lovers for some time , apparently . |
| 4 | There 'd been photographs of these people 's faces in the newspapers , but Stephen had forgotten what the faces looked like . |
| 5 | They 'd been almost-friends for six years . |
| 6 | In this way Engels asserts the generality of the principles discussed , but also he explains the importance of what he believed were remains of gentile principles in the organization of Greece and Rome . |
| 7 | All these arguments assumed , throughout their long careers , that the settled practices they challenged were orthodoxies of common conviction , not ground rules of convention . |
| 8 | His general note was one of chiding MacDonald for the weakness of his control over his own extremists and suggesting that what the country needed was men of practical experience , breadth of view and lack of dogmatic commitment . |
| 9 | This I did in what I thought were circumstances of great secrecy . |
| 10 | Although most of the new recruits to Kharkov 's metallurgical plants in 1914–17 had been ex-peasants from western Ukraine , there was no danger of nationalist sentiment ousting the Bolsheviks from the city . |
| 11 | As could be anticipated , those who had been tenants for several years , and therefore qualified for bigger discounts , were over-represented among the purchasers . |
| 12 | Not that those centuries had been times of uninterrupted peace . |
| 13 | The big American computer users — such as Boeing and General Motors — which had been pioneers of intra-company networks , were also natural supporters of OSI . |
| 14 | They had been friends for two years , best friends Jessica might have said , with her formal , respectable private education in County Down , but some of their actions and their attitudes were miles apart , centuries , planets . |
| 15 | Sir Edmund found there had been cases of physical ill-treatment such as wall-standing , hooding , noise , deprivation of sleep , and diets of bread and water . |
| 16 | As recently as 1985 , there had been signs of greater even-handedness on the part of the RUC , reflected in more frequent prosecutions of Protestants for ‘ insurgency offences ’ . |
| 17 | There had been difficulties with local planning officials . |
| 18 | He said there had been difficulties in some committee meetings in trying to achieve a quorum and said payments should be made as an award for members who attended . |
| 19 | From the late seventeenth century there had been complaints of increasing wickedness , crime and disorder . |
| 20 | There had been complaints for many years from the canal 's users , fed up with waiting in long queues at one end for the procession of boats to clear from the other ; like sitting at traffic lights that never change to green . |
| 21 | A South African foreign affairs spokesman said on Jan. 5 that there had been contacts with Soviet representatives on a regular basis , " for example on the Namibian issue " , and " should we wish to pursue talks we would do so directly " , with no need for Hungarian or any other mediation . |
| 22 | On the other hand it is difficult to argue that the Revolution resolved the major issues that had been sources of political tension since the Restoration , and it certainly did not restore the political consensus that had eluded the nation in 1660 . |
| 23 | Attacks on adult women were featured in a sustained manner in the search stage in national newspapers only when there had been attacks on several women apparently by the same offender — for instance , a special rape squad was set up when a ‘ sex beast ’ was believed to be responsible for a series of attacks on at least twenty-three women . |
| 24 | Agitation over the Irish question had assumed the proportions of a major political threat in the 1860s , bread riots were not unknown in London in this period , and in the shadow of the second Reform Bill of 1867 there had been occasions of political violence over voting reforms . |
| 25 | as if it had happened a few years ago , Mr Donal John MacLennan , leaning on his metal gate as his sheep thronged the pens of today 's farm at Corry , knew that Johnson and Boswell had been guests in this place , and that they had had good times here . |
| 26 | For example , given the great emphasis on the family and monogamy in Victorian England they were delighted when they found in the work of anthropologists a statement that there had been societies with sexual freedom and no notion of the family . |
| 27 | On the previous day there had been rallies in many parts of the Russian Federation in support of Yeltsin ( who was under threat of a no confidence vote in the Russian Congress of People 's Deputies as a result of an attack on Gorbachev in February — see p. 38013 ) , and in opposition to Gorbachev and the Union Treaty . |
| 28 | There had been allegations of Iranian involvement in the murder in Peshawar on Oct. 3 of Lt.-Gen. |
| 29 | In early September there had been allegations by Catholic bishops in the south that government soldiers in Juba were burning homes , killing suspected SPLA sympathizers , mining roads out of the town and using civilians as human shields . |
| 30 | More than half the respondents , 54 per cent , said they had been readers for at least ten years and three quarters ( 76 per cent ) had been readers for five years . |