tourette syndrome is a nervous disorder which first appears in childhood. a person with tourette syndrome has frequent, repetitive motor and vocal tics (repeated movements or sounds that you cannot control).
vocal tics may consist of repeating somebody else's words, or sudden outbursts of swear words.
tourette tics are often worse when a sufferer is tired or under stress. sufferers can hold back their tics for hours, though this leads to a strong outburst of tics later.
motor and vocal tics are classified as either'simple' or'complex'. simple tics are sudden, short movements, and complex tics are movements or speech that use more than one set of muscles.