Spastic (word)

In medicine, the adjective spastic refers to an alteration in muscle tone affected by the medical condition spasticity, which is a well-known symptomatic phenomenon seen in patients with a wide range of central neurological disorders, including spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy (for example, spastic diplegia), stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and multiple sclerosis (MS),^[1] as well as conditions such as "spastic colon." The word is derived via Latin from the Greek spastikos ("drawing in", "tugging" or "shaking uncontrollably").

Colloquially, the noun spastic, originally a medical term, is now pejorative; though severity of this differs between the United States and the United Kingdom. Disabled people in the United Kingdom often consider "spastic" to be one of the most offensive terms related to disability.^[2][3]