Spasmodic

Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down.

The conversation had roamed in a desultory spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic.

“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”

The ordinary croup of infants is spasmodic croup, and is very rarely dangerous, although the symptoms seem very alarming.

spasmodic asthma

[…] Dr. Francis Fuller, […] upon wearing a Quick-ſilver Girdle, for the Cure of the Itch, (and that after an inconſiderate and raſh manner) was brought under a violent Spaſmodick Diſtemper, which was ſupposed by himſelf and others to be owing to ſome Mercurial Particles lodg'd in ſome excretory Ducts of the Brain.

Kennedy’s vocal rasp is not caused by an infection or respiratory condition. Instead, he has spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition in which the muscles that open and close his vocal cords spasm involuntarily, creating a strained or strangled quality to his speech.

spasmodic zeal or industry

The chin was heavy, the nostrils were low and wide, and the lower lip hung loosely except in his moments of spasmodic earnestness, when it shut like a steel trap.