SPASM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Spasm

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/spˈæzəm/ Listen

noun

Spasm n.

(Med.) An involuntary and unnatural contraction of one or more muscles or muscular fibers. Note: Spasm are usually either clonic or tonic. In clonic spasm, the muscles or muscular fibers contract and relax alternately in very quick succession. In tonic spasm, the contraction is steady and uniform, and continues for a comparatively long time, as in tetanus.

A sudden, violent, and temporary effort or emotion; as, a spasm of repentance.

Cynic spasm (Med.) See under Cynic.

Spasm of the chest. See Angina pectoris, under Angina.

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Etymology of 'Spasm'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Spasm" Quotes from Famous Books

... the face of the dying man, and looked at him with deep emotion. He smiled and closed his eyes; but after lying in a quiet slumber for about an hour, he awoke with a spasm; his head fell back, and the hapless victim died in the ...

— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... did rush in, and of course where least expected. He seized one of our porters by the shoulder, his claws doing more damage than his teeth. I shot him by thrusting my rifle into his ear, and although that dropped him instantly his claws, in the dying spasm and by the weight of his fall, tore wounds in the man's arm ...

— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... wished with this handsome young man. In a brave spasm (this girl was in great suffering), "I will tell the Principal," she said; trod heavily ...

— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... gallant daring. Who can calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight?.... And yet it was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over ...

— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... Jim. "We paid seven cents, and a wonder we did as well. The receiver——" (methought a spasm seized him at the name of this official, and he broke off). "But it's all past and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the wreck. I don't seem to understand it; appears to me like as there ...

— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

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