stick in someone's throat

stick in someone's throat (third-person singular simple present sticks in someone's throat, present participle sticking in someone's throat, simple past and past participle stuck in someone's throat)

1. Alternative form of stick in someone's craw
   • 1850, Joseph Stirling Coyne, My Wife's Daughter. A comedy, in two acts, page 13:

     'Tis this confounded London fog that sticks in my throat.

   • 1961 May, “Editorial: Mr. M. presents Dr. B. - for a limited season only”, in Trains Illustrated, page 258:

     What sticks in the throat is the manner in which the appointment has been presented.

   • 2012, Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Adenauer and the CDU:

     On February 25 he told a CDU British zonal meeting that the question of finance administration was “stupid” and “beginning to stick in my throat."

   • 2014, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, page 679:

     When Levin changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for the footman and the doorman, he could not help thinking that these liveries, which were of no use to anyone but vitally necessary, to judge from the Princess's and Kitty's surprise at the mere suggestion that it would be possible to dispense with them—these liveries would cost as much as two summer labourers, that is, about three hundred days' work from Easter to Michaelmas, and hard grind every day from early morning to late in the evening, so that hundred-rouble note definitely did stick in the throat.

   • 2015, Richard Beard, Acts of the Assassins, page 63:

     This mission is rotten with absurdities that stick in her throat, but they have to start somewhere.

2. To be too difficult to speak.
   • 2012, Salvatore Mangione, Physical Diagnosis Secrets:

     In truth, it seems that the words 'I do not know' stick in every physician's throat.

   • 2012, Romano Guardini, The Lord:

     to that hour of complete self-recognition before God when excuse and argument stick in the throat, then the intrinsically fallen and “base” property he has used with love will come forward and testify for him.

   • 2014, Padma Venkatraman, A Time to Dance, page 8:

     For once, my voice doesn't stick in my throat. “I am studying hard. To be a dancer. I'm not planning to become an engineer. Or a doctor.”

   • 2015, Linda Mornell, Forever Changed:

     I look at him; the words I want to say stick in my throat.

   • 2015, Johnnie Moore, Defying ISIS, page 29:

     His mother wants to add to the story, but her words stick in her throat.

3. To cause an aching sensation in the throat as if something is stuck there.
   • 2008, Deeanne Gist, Deep in the Heart of Trouble, page 307:

     His breath stuck in his throat.

   • 2013, Charles Sheffield, Summertide:

     “It may not be like that,” he said, as soon as his heart was no longer rising to stick in his throat.

   • 2015, The Slaughter Man, page 263:

     And as I kept staring down at the car while the traffic warden moved slowly away, I felt my next breath stick in my throat.

4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stick,‎ throat.
   • 2002, Catherine Coulter, Hemlock Bay:

     I took so many of them, felt them stick in my throat and I swallowed and swallowed to get them down, and I sat with that bottle and chanted, more, more, more, and then the bottle was nearly empty and I thought suddenly, Wait, I don't want to die

   • 2012, Gary T. Brideau, River of Fire, page 30:

     Realizing he that he had just revealed his guilt, he swiftly spun around to flee, only to have a sword stuck in his throat.