tick-tock

• “The tick-tock of the brown clock on the mantelpiece is loud and the tap that Tada has mended three times drip-drips in the scullery.”

  Excerpt: The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

• “Second, if it wasn't a big deal -- or at least played up by the West Wing -- we would not have had a tick-tock on everything from the location to the choices of beer brands.”

  Have Another

• “On one hand, I liked the tick-tock on what went down on the boat — that was solid stuff.”

  Alynda Wheat's Beat Cop: We come to bury 'SVU,' not to praise it | EW.com

• “For those of you who were watching Fox broadcast "Lie to Me," (oh irony, where is thy sting?) and skipped the president's prime time news conference, Josh Marshall has the tick-tock on it.”

  100 Days Presser

• “Their disappointment when they realised that rather than playing a tune, it simply juddered and made a strange 'tick-tock' noise and finally, their efforts to shake off Daniel, her beyond annoying brother.”

  The Guardian: The Tick-tock Box - by Holly Gash

• “Even the cuckoo clock stopped its perpetual tick-tock.”

  Simon & Schuster: Chicken Soup for the Soul: New Moms

• “They're just about the EU and meetings and the normal tick-tock of an institutional bureaucracy at work.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Would Kissinger Care?

• “Moving in a crisp tick-tock to the beat of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," a stream of models marched along a simple U-shaped runway that suggested a silver city sidewalk.”

  The Washington Post: New York Fashion Week 2011: Showmanship by Michael Kors, Thom Browne, Derek Lam

• “I sat there quietly in my office listening to the tick-tock of the miniature grandfather clock on the shelf.”

  Simon & Schuster: Olivia

• “In 1992 relationship counsellor John Gray launched his book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and its central idea – that men and women deal with life, especially emotional life, differently – has formed the tick-tock heart of innumerable magazine articles ever since.”

  The Guardian: Being PC in this day and age

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