Example sentences of "[vb mod] [adv] have been a [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | To judge by the piles of broken stone , chunks of gargoyle , carved oak , black-brown and shot with wormholes , the upper chamber must once have been a workshop but was now a dump for unwanted Cathedral tat . |
| 2 | Climbing up on to a high bastion , I looked down over the shimmering interior of the fort and thought of the words that must once have been a set text for the cavalrymen stationed here : |
| 3 | Peering out , I could see that there must once have been a garden or kail-yard between the cottage and the cliff ; now the tumbledown wall enclosed nothing but a tangle of brambles and wild roses almost hiding a garden hut . |
| 4 | Ensuring the water supply for the towns during the dry Cretan summers must always have been a problem . |
| 5 | There must also have been a loop so that locomotives could run round their trains in order to be at the front for the journey back to Bishop 's Castle . |
| 6 | The company 's satisfaction with labour relations at Bridgend in South Wales must also have been a factor in the decision to build a £750m engine plant there . |
| 7 | Yet the very need for such public show-trials , apparently highlighting the fragility of the Soviet Union , its vulnerability to fascist and capitalist subversion , must inevitably have been a cause of concern and growing disquiet . |
| 8 | They see it as the ultimate proof that there must originally have been a designer , not a blind watchmaker but a far-sighted supernatural watchmaker . |
| 9 | It is very evidently a thorough piece of work ; the judgements seem well justified , and the whole exercise must surely have been a labour of love . |
| 10 | The fiscal year to December 31 1992 should actually have been a year of consolidation . |
| 11 | The French had obviously suffered a debâcle but , in itself , the opening up of the frontier with China might only have been a prelude to Chinese invasion and ensuing catastrophe . |
| 12 | They were in another disused , rubble-filled space which might once have been a yard or garden . |
| 13 | The men in berets at the house at Hackballs Cross , the possibility he might once have been a gunman in his wild and woolly youth . |
| 14 | The fragmentary remains from Eccles have been interpreted as the figures of two gladiators , although , in light of the subjects of other figural designs in Britain ( see below ) , this might also have been a hunting scene ( or could have been of figures other than gladiators ; see the drawing of Cupids as gladiators : pI . |
| 15 | The picture was of such clarity that it might even have been a photograph . |
| 16 | I was expectant of something being done for me , it might even have been a creation of the DHSS . |
| 17 | So the man worth just under £2 might well have been a person of some consequence in the community . |
| 18 | We lack the information necessary to relate it with confidence to specific plate tectonic events , as is possible for the Cretaceous , but the Cambrian sea-level rise might well have been a consequence of opening of the Iapetus Ocean , with the growth of a spreading ridge ( Anderton , 1980 , 1982 ) . |
| 19 | Genteel and restful with lace cloths on the little tables , parlour palms in pots around what might almost have been a dais for a three-piece orchestra , and table service by waitresses in neat black dresses and white lace caps and aprons , the Palm Court was invariably at its busiest with morning coffees and afternoon teas when shoppers were tempted with an array of dainty cakes and pastries and hot toasted teacakes in silver dishes complete with lids . |
| 20 | With his open-necked shirt , his air of dejected exhaustion and the newspaper spread open on his knee , he might almost have been a kidnap victim waiting to have his existence confirmed by means of a Polaroid photograph . |
| 21 | The whole thing sometimes appears such an enigma that there might almost have been a conspiracy of silence . |
| 22 | One possibility might then have been a link-up with the Sumed pipeline across Egypt from the other side of the Red Sea to Alexandria , but the evidence for this is confined to a report in MEW on 25 March 1985 and the Aqaba project was never implemented anyway . |
| 23 | I do n't regret it , of course — I might never have been a priest otherwise — but I often think that that 's why I just do n't seem able to come to grips with the modern world . ’ |
| 24 | Churches remain at Maddington , Shrewton , and Rollestone , while Elston formerly had a chapel which may once have been a church . |
| 25 | It was n't a role he was particularly keen on — he 'd rather have been a pilot . |
| 26 | Our respective manners proved so widely different , that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog . ’ |
| 27 | And so it was that she died alone in a mental hospital — as Eliot told Violet Schiff , one of the few who had known them both from their earliest days together , death could only have been a deliverance for her . |
| 28 | Rune muttered what could only have been a string of invective in his own language as he released his hold on her . |
| 29 | ‘ But ‘ little ’ could just have been a term of endearment . |
| 30 | He could easily have been a character in a Thomas Mann novel — the great remote maestro venturing down from The Magic Mountain to talk to a visiting writer . |