shadow-box 
verb [no object] (often as noun shadow-boxing)
1Spar with an imaginary opponent as a form of training: train for agility with fast shadow-boxing they shadow-boxed a bit to warm up...
- Greer scorns the spectacle of ‘a modern Hamlet bumbling and dithering around the stage, shadow-boxing with his own personality, especially when the part is played in a cinematic inward-turning way.’
- The words sound very outspoken and authoritative, but are really shadow-boxing: nobody who is sufficiently civilised in approach to be reading such a book is likely to disagree with them.
- Things are going to go wrong on the first day, but it is like shadow-boxing: it is not going to be the real fight.
1.1Make a show of tackling a problem or opponent while avoiding any direct engagement: a fortnight of political shadow-boxing...
- Only last month, in the Prime Minister's "seminal" speech about foreign relations, he was still shadow-boxing with the past.
- look as if butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth
- look as if one has seen a ghost
- look back
- look back at/on
- look before you leap
- lookbook
- look daggers at
- lookdown
- look down on
- look down one's nose at
- looked-after
- looked-for
- looked-up-to
- looker
- looker-in
- looker-on
- looker-out
- looker-upper
- look for all the world like
- look for trouble
- look forward to
- look here!
- lookie-likie
- lookie-loo
- look in