(1) The California election has been designated by the media as an official instrument for measuring just about every tic and nuance of the American political landscape.

(2) It's a stylistic tic that characterises much of his work.

(3) Kerry is displaying his most annoying tic : insisting that he's being clear and precise when he's fuzzing over everything.

(4) You thought that his cannibalism was some sort of weird tic , something he tried struggling with but just ended up accepting.

(5) It is my sincere hope that this proposed project is no more than a tic .

(6) As he hops between them - in what may be the band's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup.

(7) A new media tic - likening George W. Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt - is already so widespread that it's apt to become a conditioned reflex of American journalism.

(8) As I watched, he started to display another characteristic tic - smiling and giving her a lazy wink.

(9) Right now a spasmodic tic in his leg at the wrong time could get him killed.

(10) After sitting down to dinner in the East Village, a bunch of us pulled out our phones, which activity I've noticed is a kind of nerd group tic .

(11) They've developed a verbal tic which involves repeating odd bits of each other's utterances

(12) On the whole, I think he's doing a lot that I personally like in this book, but there is one particular tic I really hate.

(13) Oddly, the quality of the recording is stellar in contrast to the rest of the album's material, and every vocal tic and nuance is instantly palpable.

(14) Just going by a vaguely detected linguistic tic , I think this particular leader was written by the Guardian's timid political editor.

(15) One stylistic tic Macklin practices in many poems is the refusal to choose the precise word she wants, yoking alternatives with a slash.

(16) This story in the Washington Post, however, manages to exhibit almost every tic that Chomsky would identify as corporate propaganda.

(17) That unfortunate verbal tic doesn't invite confidence, but I would willingly defend the bulk of what Pilger has had to say in recent years.

(18) This is exemplified by the case of a patient who had a facial tic and eczema around the mouth.

(19) The psychiatrist wants to try an anti-psychotic medicine used to treat tics .

(20) The actor's tics and idiosyncrasies are in full flower here.