jimjams
Americanplural noun
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a slang word for delirium tremens
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a state of nervous tension, excitement, or anxiety
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informal pyjamas
Etymology
Origin of jimjams
1540–50; gradational compound based on jam 1. Cf. flimflam, jingle-jangle, etc.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It may well give genuine admirers of good cinema and credible Englishmen the jimjams.
From Time Magazine Archive
To sidewalk farmers, who suppose that a ridgeling is the peak in a barn roof and a freemartin a species of swallow,*some of Gus's outbuildings and his hog runs might well give the jimjams.
From Time Magazine Archive
I’m due to have some bad dreams to-night anyhow, on the strength of this snake-killin’, but it’d give me the jumpin’ jimjams if I had to sleep next to them remains.
From Hidden Water by Dixon, Maynard
"Was it jimjams, or only a bad nightmare?"
From Dick in the Everglades by Dimock, A. W.
He was a young fellow, one of "Kitchener's crowd," and told us frankly that he had the "jimjams" in this solitude of Ypres and "saw Germans" every time a rat jumped.
From Now It Can Be Told by Gibbs, Philip
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
