The word spasmodic has appeared in 25 New York Times articles in the past year, including on June 23 in "A Rinse and a Roll on a River in Nepal" by Mark Sundeen:

• ... The river held me face-first in its washing machine; icy water blasted my sinuses and seized my heart. Being upside-down in a kayak is always startling, especially when it's February. Before I could roll back over, the river flipped me upright, dunked me again, then released me from the hole. I prepared to roll, but my arms, their sleeves now engorged with gallons of cold water, were numb, unresponsive objects. With a spasmodic jerk I flicked my head above the surface, sucked air like a carp, and flopped below again. I prepared again, but now my knee slipped out of the cockpit, and instead of reinserting it, I felt slight relief that I was that much closer to escaping this coffin. I groped for the handle on the spray skirt, pulled it, and was flushed out of the boat into churning water.