As a departure date looms, tour operators will cut prices on their flight-plus-hotel packages, while scheduled flight-only prices tend to keep rising.

And if you haven't used meat as the use-by date looms, freeze it.

That divvy sell-by date looms.

Clouds loomed overhead, with brilliant blue cracks sometimes opening among them, and the only sound was the twittering of swallows as they swept to and fro over the wheat stubble.

A mysterious mechanical device looms overhead.

Fortunately, the declaratory-judgment procedure allows the alleged infringer to proactively bring suit to resolve the situation and eliminate the cloud of uncertainty looming overhead.

The investors were struggling to make the mortgage payments and bankruptcy loomed overhead.

A century later, the question looms even larger.

But a bigger question looms in the background.

This question looms even larger here than her prominent nose and long incisors, and leads to a lengthy discussion of the processes involved in making butter and cheese.

Recession looms, money grows tight: it pays to spend wisely, and not just on the supermarket shop.

This year, the shadow of economic recession looms large.

The intervention will ramp up the pressure on big companies to look after more than their own interests as the threat of recession looms.

So here, as recession looms and unemployment rises, are some recipes for light relief.

To continue to pretend that we do not, as recession looms, may prove politically dangerous.

For many people another threat looms.

But a big threat looms over the prospects for a return to something approaching normal prosperity and full employment.

But a seismic threat looms.

Yet an even greater threat looms.

The coming war looms subtly, but ominously.

A good old-fashioned price war looms, such as the one that saw me live off 9p loaves of bread and 6p cans of beans as a student.

Civil war looms within the party.