do
verb (used with object)
to perform (an act, duty, role, etc.).
had been doing
-
past perfect progressiveof do.past perfect progressive
Used to describe an action that was ongoing continuously in the past up until another past event interrupted it.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Value investors were eating the market’s dust and small-capitalization value stocks had been doing particularly poorly.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
The airline took the contract from rival British Airways, which had been doing it since the 2008 games in Beijing, external.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026
Back when they had been doing this exact work, there was another landmark women’s rights battle that had been won just 50 years prior as well: the suffragists’ fight for the right to vote.
From Slate ● Sep. 3, 2026
After his death, his obituary paid tribute to his love of Montana—while also revealing the work he and Jones had been doing together to build a livestock auction company, as well as a rodeo.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 21, 2026
The project neatly combined work each had been doing previously—Lawrence’s research under Swann into the photoelectric effect in gas vapor and Beams’s investigation of short-lived physical phenomena.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
