throat-clearing

• “For although "The Zoo Story" retains a shattering appeal in its undermining of affluent New York's urbane complacency, the preliminary act - set in Peter's Upper East Side apartment - comes across as a sedate exercise in throat-clearing.”

  The Washington Post: 'At Home at the Zoo' expands Albee's classic one-act play

• “After a lot of throat-clearing, he finally asked if there was any way I could stop my mother from calling their station because it was taking time away from real emergencies.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Memory Palace

• “They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc.”

  The Wall Street Journal: The Fine Art of Where to Start

• “Most of us -- including me -- do way too much throat-clearing at the beginning of our stories.”

  The Huffington Post: Delia Lloyd: 5 Ways to Improve Your Fiction

• “We are not going to give a grade to this thing until we have a chance to talk to Palestinian Authority leaders about the implications," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, along with the usual throat-clearing about U.S. red lines.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Obama's Palestine Test

• “Only a second round of throat-clearing, obviously more forced than the last, kept him from losing himself once again in the woman in his arms.”

  Simon & Schuster: Healing the Highlander

• “That voice, that one-time awe-inspiring natural resource now sounds polluted and in perpetual need of a throat-clearing.”

  The revenge of the voice

• “I'm betting that gamification, in spite of its throat-clearing name, is going to be big in the commercial world -- and in schools.”

  Forbes: The 'Gamification' Of Education

• “England appeal, but given that the ball pitched outside leg and hit the batsman on the thigh, it was little more than a bit of throat-clearing.”

  The Guardian: Pakistan v England – live! | Andy Bull and Rob Smyth

• “Tourette is characterized by tics, which include things like eye-blinking, head-jerking, eye-darting, shoulder-shrugging and yelling or throat-clearing -- all of it uncontrolled, according to the Mayo Clinic.”

  The Huffington Post: Thera Sanchez Develops Mysterious Tourette-Like Illness -- Along With 11 Other Girls From School

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