Example sentences of "[adv] [vb past] to be [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | His words jarred Harriet and she swallowed at the ball of nerves that suddenly seemed to be constricting her throat . |
| 2 | It was as big as the island itself , if not bigger , and the rocks below seemed to be wobbling under the strain of holding it up . |
| 3 | He looked around briefly at the women with the scraggy necks in the Laura Ashley dresses , and the men who all seemed to be wearing red ties , and probably Seiko watches — but for a different reason from Bob . |
| 4 | Despite this chilly inconvenience , however , the place was crowded with people who all seemed to be talking at once . |
| 5 | ‘ One faces a decision , I guess at such times , about how far to go with company instructions , and since the spirit of such meetings only appeared to be correcting a horrible price level situation , that there was not an attempt to actually damage customers , charge excessive prices , there was no personal gain in it for me , the company did not seem actually to be defrauding , corporate statements can evidence the fact that there have been poor profits during all these years … |
| 6 | ‘ One faces a decision , I guess , at such times , about how far to go with company instructions , and since the spirit of such meetings only appeared to be correcting a horrible price level situation , that there was not an attempt to damage customers , charge excessive prices , there was no personal gain in it for me , the company did not seem actually to be defrauding … morally it did not seem quite so bad as might be inferred by the definition of the activity itself . ’ |
| 7 | Like all basically lazy people he was content to let things be not only when they were going well , but also when they merely appeared to be going well . |
| 8 | He was polishing glasses and he held them up to the light to check them and thereby seemed to be ignoring Maidstone completely . |
| 9 | Yet the yawning emptiness out here upon the vast deck already seemed to be swallowing any sense of connexion with the interior of the fortress-monastery … |
| 10 | Hitler no longer seemed to be speaking to convince ; rather , he seemed to feel that he was expressing what the audience , by now transformed into a single mass , expected of him . |
| 11 | Chemistry in turn , even ‘ organic chemistry ’ , was considerably more advanced than the life-sciences , which just seemed to be taking off into an era of exciting progress . |
| 12 | Pilkington disliked the impression conveyed that these friendly personalities just happened to be recommending products as though they were disinterested parties . |
| 13 | BBS seriously considered firing Hopper ; the pressure of moving a production team of twenty-three people from state to state , writing the script on the run and persuading innocent citizens of the United States of America who just happened to be passing at the time to appear in the movie , was a heavy burden for all . |
| 14 | Just happened to be passing , you know the sort of thing . ’ |
| 15 | The puppet is an exhibit at a cartoon gallery in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the real Mr Heseltine just happened to be passing through . |
| 16 | We were able to help him … we can see their house from our bedroom and we just happened to be looking out of the window at the time , do n't you know . ’ |
| 17 | Maybe it was n't even him that took my bag — maybe it was one of those American tourists or someone I did n't even see , and Dayglo here — Vern — just happened to be running along the wharf . |
| 18 | And also , the use of the yellow background , I do n't know , erm whether it was deliberately chosen or whether she just happened to be standing there , but the yellow background makes it stand out . |
| 19 | The police just happened to be checking cars today . |
| 20 | The ceasefire agreement nevertheless appeared to be holding in the corridors , at least up to the final week of February , and there had still been no reports of any serious breaches of the Rome agreement . |
| 21 | Although parliamentary government did not cease to work , it no longer appeared to be working in the way that it had in the past . |
| 22 | Someone , somewhere out there just had to be searching for her . |
| 23 | He always seemed to be ringing from a callbox , on grounds that the walls in his office had ears . |
| 24 | He always seemed to be hanging about , keeping a watchful eye on them . |
| 25 | He always seemed to be picking on me . |
| 26 | He was clever in a bubbling , sideways way that Masklin distrusted ; he always seemed to be bottling up excitement about something , and when he spoke the words always rushed out , with Nisodemus putting ‘ ums ’ in the flow of words so that he could catch his breath without anyone having the chance to interrupt him . |
| 27 | The effect was that he always seemed to be smiling . |
| 28 | And he always seemed to be campaigning vigorously and futilely for some boy or other who had been sent to borstal for a criminal offence . |
| 29 | If she ever saw her , she thought worriedly ; she always seemed to be rushing off somewhere — and then she jumped when someone tapped on the door . |
| 30 | Back in his hometown of Cork , Fergus always seemed to be floating in the wake of the other noted Cork scrum-half , Michael Bradley . |