Example sentences of "they had been [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Their mothers and sisters looked upon them in a new way , because until now they had been sons and brothers , but were from that day to be turned into men by the strictest mistress of all . |
| 2 | They had been friends for eight long years , and now they had reached the parting of the ways . |
| 3 | They had been friends when he was grown up . |
| 4 | After a heart-to-heart talk , she had gently ordered him home for the rest of the week , and since that time they had been friends in a reserved sort of way . |
| 5 | 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 . |
| 6 | They had been friends for long enough , they 'd been to school together for a little while until geography had pushed them apart , then they 'd met up again as older teenagers , both interested in bars and snooker , then in girls . |
| 7 | It had been forty years since he had first met Felicity ; they had been students at the Sorbonne reading a course entitled ‘ Civilisation francaise ’ , paid for by their indulgent fathers . |
| 8 | The windows were barred with white painted shutters covered with curtains of crimson velvet , her feet rested on a Turkey carpet and the walls were as thickly covered with pictures as if they had been pages in a stamp collection . |
| 9 | Because she was tired of looking at flats that were really bedsits , and bedsits that were really cupboards , but cost as much as if they had been flats . |
| 10 | On the polo field they had been dynamite and almost telepathetic in anticipating each other 's moves . |
| 11 | This demonstration was the first independent action on the part of a teachers ' association ; previously , they had been government controlled . |
| 12 | They had been country people and I was taken off to visit relatives and friends in Shepley and Harewood , sucking mintoes as a treat . |
| 13 | Good d Good does in fact do what you said and his recommendation er for final salary schemes is er a third of the trustees should be or have the right to be er from the , the members and er er we 've in our er comments to you have er looked at a global point of view and said no not are these proposals worthy in themselves , but using a different criteria that if they had been law as Ken said earlier , would they have stopped Maxwell and a situation where a third of the trustees were er were they members er would have made no difference er cos typically in our cases there were originally about four trustees er and unfortunately for us , three of them were named Maxwell . |
| 14 | Benny did n't know that Peggy Pine was an old friend of Mother Francis , that they had been girls years ago and that when she came to the convent she called Mother Francis Bunty . |
| 15 | They were twisted and butchered and maimed and it was difficult to see if they had been Oaks or Beeches or Elms or what . |
| 16 | Yet when I emerged from that heaven-haven of sexual absolution , I would feel guilty , frightened , torn between happiness at being liberated from overwhelming sexual tension and the scared wonder of the events , as if they had been rituals in a half-remembered primitive religion . |
| 17 | In the event , permission was given for Paisley and Beattie to go forward because they had been members of the Stormont Parliament before it had been suspended . |
| 18 | They used the Latin script , and they had been part of the western world from the time of the Roman Empire . |
| 19 | They did not want to repudiate totally their previous policies , yet had to recognise the disaster of which they had been part . |
| 20 | In this case , space is left unused in the main data area when the file is created , and additions are located on the same cylinder ( IBM ) or seek area ( ICL ) that they would have occupied if they had been part of the file when it was created . |
| 21 | On July 19 three of the original five asylum seekers told Cuban television that they had been part of a plot hatched by diplomats from the US Interests Section and from the Czechoslovak , West German and Canadian embassies , all of whom denied the allegation . |
| 22 | One , seldom more than three feet high and called by Ray the Dwarf Red Rose , had small flowers and rounded buds which before opening appeared ‘ as if they had been clipp 'd with Scissars ’ . |
| 23 | Yeah the master walked past , if they had been boys they would have said something , you know , go into your study and do some work , do something you know , but because they were girls th we were girls they did n't |
| 24 | But manager Frankie Parks said last night : ‘ You would think they had been pals all their life . |
| 25 | People were asked what crimes they had been victims of ( victim study ) and about their own law-breaking ( self-report study ) , and they were also asked about their attitudes towards the police and policing . |
| 26 | Immediately after the fall of the eastern bloc regimes , even the top nomenklatura professed that they had been closet democrats all along , pushing relentlessly for change from within the structures of power . |
| 27 | Yes , they had been neighbours in Shrewsbury , but of course they had only seen each other during the school holidays , and of course they had n't made friends over some grotty little terrace-house garden fence ; he 'd first noticed her from the tree house in his parents ' garden while she was learning to ride her new pony in her parents ' ten acres of mature woodland and well-kept pasture . |
| 28 | They had been Ping Tiao . |
| 29 | But even if they had been MacQuillan 's they would have been no use . |
| 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 . |