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
It is certain that gold standing alone is not; for its fluctuations in purchasing power have been so tremendous as again and again to throw the commercial world into jimjams.
From If Not Silver, What? by Bookwalter, John W.
Several whalers watched the procession until they got the jimjams by force of imagination, and when their bodies began to float down with the bottles, the down-river people got anxious.
From Over the Sliprails by Lawson, Henry
For one thing, Pinto, no cop goes into hysterics at sight of a dead body unless his conscience is giving him the jimjams.
From The Gray Phantom's Return by Landon, Herman
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.
