Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] for [adj] [noun] " 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 | Both countries had been speaking for some time of their desire to improve relations , without making much progress . |
| 9 | 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 ) . |
| 10 | To judge by the clutter of bottles , glasses , and over-filled ashtrays , and the brooding , weary faces , they had been debating for many hours . |
| 11 | Many had been decomposing for several weeks . |
| 12 | 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 . |
| 13 | This was reportedly a concession which US oil companies had been seeking for some time . |
| 14 | 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 . |
| 15 | These solutions , which involved old technology , simply applied to the ocean freighter what railroads and truckers had been using for 30 years . |
| 16 | James Ousley , chief executive officer of the Control Data Systems Inc spin-out , says its former parent , Control Data Corp — now divided into two separate companies ( UX No 387 ) — had been looking for additional capital for a number of years , but was not able to tempt any investors to bankroll an organisation with interests as diverse as proprietary mainframes , Unix , military and government software and services and a lottery business . |
| 17 | For the first time she recognized that secretly she had been looking for some way out for herself and Midnight . |
| 18 | The City and the Confederation of British Industry had been looking for some indication of earlier participation in the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS . |
| 19 | 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 . |
| 20 | The phone had been ringing for some time . |
| 21 | By the time I was twelve years old I had been thinking for some time about getting a bird of my own . |
| 22 | In fact , he was so happy with the idea that had come to him from the writer , Peter Shaffer , he began the serious rethink of his career which friends like Lance Percival had been thinking for some time was overdue . |
| 23 | The biggest problem and disappointment was that the international rig count continued downwards and that was where we had been hoping for increased sales and increased market share looking into this year and into the last part of last year . |
| 24 | 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 . |
| 25 | 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 . |
| 26 | I took a drink from one of the twenty-four plastic gallon containers which I had been collecting for two years . |
| 27 | 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 . |
| 28 | All had been festering for many years . |
| 29 | 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 . |
| 30 | Hart , a big man with a beard , had been teaching for nineteen years . |