grooming call
n.— «“Grooming calls”—those calls made just to say hi, to let someone know you’re thinking of them—can release healthy endorphins. The report calls the mobile “an antidote to urban alienation.”» —“Never Alone” The Age (Australia) May 15, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Understanding the varieties of conversational styles can mean the difference between feeling you’re understood and being insulted. “High-involvement” speakers interrupt or talk along with someone else to signal their enthusiasm...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...