Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) delirium tremens, a hangover; thus in sing. a drunken hallucination (see cite 1910)_.

1852		C.L. Canfield Diary of a Forty-Niner (1906) 143: He bought his rum by the gallon and kept soaked all the time. Tuesday night he had a bad attack of the jim-jams.
1873		Grantham Jrnl 7 June 7/1: [from Boston Globe] The Mayor galooted up the church aisle, swashaying and gyrating like a Chinese Joss with the jim-jams.
1878		F.H. Hart Sazerac Lying Club 97: A clear case of the jim-jams.
c.1880		‘The Alphabet Poem’ (US Army poem) n.p.: J is the Jim-Jims, when Bug-Juice ain’t seen.
1882		G.W. Peck Peck’s Sunshine 97: He is not [...] pulled to nearest saloon by a forty horse power devil, as is the man who has the jim jams.
1884		Sporting Times 19 Jan. 1/2: ‘Mention the names of some of the best known snakes’ [...] ‘Boa constrictors [...] sea serpents, jim-jams’.
1884		Sporting Times 20 Sept. 7/2: Drink plentiful [...] There is a chance for any adventurous stranger to try conclusions with the kimjams. Betting — 100-1 on the jams.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 May 13/1: Since the country editors began to write leaders about the Soudan, Arabic expressions have become as common in the back blocks as the jimjams.
1891		in Punch 4 Apr. 167: The Jim-Jamsh! Eugh! I shee ’em! / All eyesh and limbsh, all twists, and twirls, and twiddles.
1891		Sporting Times 3 Jan. 2/2: ‘He’s got the jams, and he says he’ll murder you’.
1890		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 Mar. 3/1: [T]hey rant and tear around and whoop things up and impress their neighbors with the idea that they have an attack of jim jams, worms or jumping stomach-ache.
1893		Leicester Chron. 8 Apr. 12/4: The captain [...] had a bit fit of the jim-jams, as sailors call D.Ts.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 11 Feb. 7/2: So I put him down a whaler, rather prone to telling crams, / Or, perhaps as he’d been drinking, now afflicted with jim jams.
1894		E.W. Rogers [perf. Vesta Tilley] The End of the Song 🎵 Hold up cocky! / Got the jim-jams once again?
1900		J. Conrad Lord Jim 35: No, seriously, I never remember being so interested in a case of jimjams before.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 6 Mar. 4/6: The Japanese warship flies something that looks like a many-legged red spider seen by a man far gone to the jimjams.
1908		E.S. Sorenson Quinton’s Rouseabout and other Stories 116: ‘Some men, you know, [...] see astonishing things and hear most extraordinary sounds after drink.’ ‘I’ve been through that mill,’ he said, with a touch of impatience. ‘This ain’t no jim-jams, I ain’t tasted a drop since five months ago.’.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 24 July 2nd sect. 11/8: A well-shickered white man [...] took her for a beer jim-jam and crawled into an empty 400-gallon tank to dodge the colored calamity.
1913		H. Lawson ‘The Downfall of Little Willie’ in Roderick (1972) 817: Mimicking the crippled and afflicted, and joining the jim-jams in league against any harmless drunk that might be delivered into his hands.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 173: I wouldn’t ha’ minded a crocodile [...] I should ha’ known a crocodile was jest the jim-jams.
1916		‘Anzac’ On the Anzac Trail 77: [T]he kind of lush that gives you a sixty-horse dose of the jim-jams while you wait.
1925		Townsville Daily Bulletin 20 June 38/5: The stranger would be the owner of bloodshot eyes and a touch of the jimjams.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1933		M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 53: I lay gasping on the hot rocks like a fantod with the jim-jams.
1969		in DARE.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 134: Predictably, the after-effects of the grog are the subject of some colloquialising: the jimjams; the dts; the fantods; the shakes (joe blakes in rhyming slang).

2. odd manners, personal peculiarities.

1888		Cincinnati Commercial Gazette 22 July n.p.: We are glad to see Harper’s Weekly suffering the jim-jams of distortion on the envenomed pencil of an extraordinary artist [F&H].
1889		Music Hall & Theatre Rev. 23 Mar. 86/2: Julia’s mash never returned — he said there were jim-jams in the family.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.

3. ‘nerves’, apprehension, a fit of depression.

c.1869		W.S. Gilbert Lost Bab Ballads (1932) 118: When you’re bad with the creeps and the crawls, / And the shivers, and shudders, and shakes [...] you’ve got to the a state which is known / To the medical world as ‘jim-jams’.
1877		R. Burdette Rise and Fall of the Mustache 291: This ‘Centennial Cordial and American Indian Aboriginal Invigorator,’ [...] has positively no equal for the cure of [...] rattlesnake bites, jim-jams, katzenjammer, tight boots, bad breath.
1885		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 12 Dec. 2/2: ‘Fritz’ Emmit is having a spell of jim-jams.
1889		Shields Dly Gaz. 31 Aug. 6/1: Hatch was badly scared, and almost ready to go into the jimjams.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 12 July 13/1: A Far Northern doctor [...] was chained up in a cell the other day with the jim-jams and a loaded revolver.
1900		Sporting Times 7 Apr. 2/1: The very thing to keep ’em from writing books and things, and straining their wrists, and getting nutmeg livers, authors’ palsies, and poets’ jim-jams.
1908		Manchester Courier 28 Dec. 8/1: Compensation for having caused the creeps, or the ‘jim-jams’ or jumps according to the nature of the nervous people visited by them.
1909		H. Lawson ‘The Land of Living Lies’ in Roderick (1967–9) II 341: Has-Beens we, who fight the cheerful jim-jams of the Written Out.
1914		C. Holme Lonely Plough (1931) 107: He was giving me the jim-jams!
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 134: Wow, Ruth that place gives me the infernal jimjams.
1932		A. Huxley Brave New World (1955) 148: A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away.
1940		V. Hodgson Diaries (1999) 12 Nov. 85: One bomb very near. It may be Campden Hill. It shook this house and gave me the jim-jams for a few moments.
1944		J. Cary Horse’s Mouth (1948) 24: It is always a good plan, during an attack of the jimjams, to try at least four matches.
1953		F. Brown Madball (2019) 189: ‘The sound of water running always gives me the jim-jams’.
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 312: I tell you every time Margot goes out, I get the jim-jams.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 166: It was the jimjams. The inside shakes. The sweats.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 305: Cold teak will give you the jim-jams.
1986		S. King It (1987) 902: Got to get a hold of yourself, Mikey. It’s the jim-jams, that’s all.
2000		F.X. Toole Rope Burns 234: He had the jimjams bad.

4. a monster (produced by drunken excess).

1922

E. Dyson Missing Link 🌐 Ch. xiv: The tale of Dutchy Schmitz howling mad in the hotel, while a great, hairy, hideous jim-jam capered on the floor before him.

5. used as adj. to denote instability.

1899

Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 9 Sept.2/4: You like to have a lot of jim-jam ornaments about your drawing room, that break if you look at them. I don’t.