tic douloureux
- noun
- /tɪk duːləˈruː/
- Archaic
:
tic douloureux
- Doctors diagnosed him with tic douloureux, a condition that causes sudden, severe facial pain.
Examples
-
This paper includes 28 cases with typical tic douloureux and 14 cases with atypical tic douloureux previously reported.
Academic text (1996) -
She experiences debilitating pain from tic douloureux on the right side of her face.
-
This paper includes 28 cases with typical tic douloureux and 14 cases with atypical tic douloureux previously reported.
Academic text (1996) -
An additional 59 operations were performed for atypical tic douloureux or other lesions that produced Vth nerve pain.
Academic text (1996) -
Understanding tic douloureux is important for managing the acute episodes of pain it produces.
Synonyms
3
9.3
A sudden strong pain along a nerve, often in the face
1
7.5
A sudden, very strong, sharp pain in one side of the face caused by a nerve problem
A sudden, very strong pain along the path of a nerve
Surface Forms
Morphology
tic + douloureux
This is a French medical loanphrase whose components literally mean 'painful tic' (tic = involuntary movement; douloureux = painful), so a learner who knows the constituents would get a rough sense of pain plus a twitch or spasm. However, the expression denotes a specific clinical condition (trigeminal neuralgia) with a specialized, idiomatic medical sense that is not fully recoverable from the literal parts, making the meaning only partially predictable.
Etymology
Tic douloureux comes from French: tic means 'twitch' and douloureux means 'painful'. The name gives the image of a sudden facial twitch with very sharp pain, so it now refers to the severe, sudden nerve pain in the face.