Neurologists learned to observe funny little tics in patients' behavior - things that laymen might never notice - and mentally trace the faulty connections back to the brain.

Most of the Bagatelles sound like salon music until you notice the small interruptions in rational forward movement, the little tics and hesitations of rhythm and meter.

My voice, flat, Midwestern and too fast, is a good voice if the emotion is carried in it, with all the little vocal tics.

His skin was crawling, and he had dozens of irritating little tics.

A little tic of movement, a tiny pattern from within, takes on its own life, blossoms and matures, leaving its parent phrase to die away.

But it is a distinct cultural marker, one of those little tics that make Americans different from everybody else.

He felt little tics all over his body as small muscles jumped and twitched, and he had never been so wide-awake in his life.

Blade, concealed in the area-way, watched the truck with a little tic of unease.

They ignore the obvious stuff and concentrate instead on the seemingly unobtrusive little tics that the writer and reader barely notice.

I was a bundle of prudish little tics.