Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] for [adj] [noun pl] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | I am convinced that stuff had been accumulating for many years in this cellar and that Ernest Griffiths had no idea what was in there . |
| 2 | The US and North Korean governments had been communicating for several years at a low level through the US embassy in Beijing . |
| 3 | Alexei had been listening for other footsteps coming along the bridge . |
| 4 | A report to the meeting said services to the region had been deteriorating for several years , with fewer trains running at less flexible times . |
| 5 | A report to the meeting said services to the region had been deteriorating for several years , with fewer trains at less flexible times . |
| 6 | Indeed , I recall being present at a formal state banquet in Malawi when the Life President , His Excellency the very elderly Dr Hastings Banda , had been speaking for 45 minutes proposing the toast and had still only reached 1947 . |
| 7 | Film shown on Algerian television that same evening recorded that he had been speaking for some minutes . |
| 8 | One student looking for employment had finished his grant entitlement in the first quarter of 1984 , and had been job-seeking for six months ( Table 7.2 ) . |
| 9 | To judge by the clutter of bottles , glasses , and over-filled ashtrays , and the brooding , weary faces , they had been debating for many hours . |
| 10 | Many had been decomposing for several weeks . |
| 11 | Eve had n't known that Birdie Mac who ran the sweet shop had a man from Ballylee who had been calling for fifteen years , but she would n't leave her old mother and the man from Ballylee would n't come to Knockglen . |
| 12 | By the time he and Norman strode out to try to win the 1986 British Open , Bender had been caddying for eighteen years , having picked up his first serious bag when he was 18 years old . |
| 13 | These solutions , which involved old technology , simply applied to the ocean freighter what railroads and truckers had been using for 30 years . |
| 14 | The group had been meeting for two years , and it was mainly a consciousness-raising group , although , with only about twenty groups in London as a whole , some of them , the ‘ housewives ’ , the women who worked part-time were also able to help run the voluntary rota in the central London office , the Women 's Liberation Workshop . |
| 15 | The Old Stopfordians ' Association had been trying for many years to raise sufficient money to build the Pavilion , and indeed had sold the Harrison Towns field some three years previously for this very reason . |
| 16 | It would have been more usual to have asked her with careful casualness to wait behind after the meeting but what he had to say was private and he had been trying for some weeks now to cut down the number of times when they were known to be alone together . |
| 17 | I took a drink from one of the twenty-four plastic gallon containers which I had been collecting for two years . |
| 18 | After his exit from Monday 's semi-finals , Black revealed that he had been struggling for five years with a ‘ bio-mechanical ’ problem which affects his body balance and leads to other injuries . |
| 19 | All had been festering for many years . |
| 20 | Reagan hammered away at themes which he had been developing for some years and which would be wheeled out every time he ran for public office . |
| 21 | Hart , a big man with a beard , had been teaching for nineteen years . |
| 22 | Friends say she never recovered from hearing Gilbey , who she had been dating for two years , tell Diana he loved her — 53 times in the 23 minute call . |
| 23 | Jo and Ryan had been dating for six months and had progressed some way beyond parking now . |
| 24 | Bernard and Laura escaped on to their sailing boat for much of the summer , a yacht they had been enjoying for some years now , and they pottered around Mykonos in Greece . |
| 25 | Essentially the case involved a youth leader of the Red Cross , who admitted joining the Red Cross to bring him closer to young girls , whom he had been abusing for thirty years . |
| 26 | Intending to be a priest of the Church of England , I lost my faith , slowly but painfully , and at the end of the summer left Oxford and the house in Norham Gardens in which I had been living for two years and in which , by a curious turn of fortune , my office now is . |
| 27 | Another , a woman who was living , and had been living for many years in , in continuous adultery ! |
| 28 | Roddy Lou Thai was not pleased at all to be questioned by two representatives of the repressive Imperialist Government , under whose chauvinistic wing he had been living for four years . |
| 29 | Philip Larkin had already published two novels — Jill ( 1946 ) and A Girl in Winter ( 1947 ) — before he established himself in 1955 , with The Less Deceived , as the best poet of his generation ; and John Osborne 's first play ever to reach the public theatre , Look Back in Anger ( 1956 ) , was written by an actor untouched by academia who had been writing for several years and a stranger to all of them . |
| 30 | Lisa had been smoking for twenty years and felt unable to stop for more than a day . |