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The past perfect progressive (sometimes referred to as the past perfect continuous) combines had (the simple past of have) with been (the past participle of be) and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. It is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference.
The past tense form must have understood applies only to the near-certainty mode; expressing obligation in the past requires the lexical construction had to + verb. had better and had best both indicate obligatory mode (He had better do that soon). Often had is omitted (He best be gone soon). There is no corresponding past tense form.
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
When I returned, John had been at the shops for three hours. (he was still there) Been is used in such sentences in combination with to as if it were a verb of motion (being followed by adverbial phrases of motion), which is different from its normal uses as part of the copula verb be. Compare: Sue has been to the beach. (as above; Sue went to ...
Examples in English are: "we had arrived" before the game began; "they had been writing" when the bell rang. The word derives from the Latin plus quam perfectum, "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states.
Newly released 911 audio revealed the horrifying moment a 7-year-old Ohio girl begged her armed father not to kill her during a standoff with cops, telling him, “I don’t want to go to heaven ...