Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an abandoned or promiscuous woman.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Brim, or Brimstone a very Impudent, Lew’d Woman.
c.1707		‘The Long Vacation’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 144: One above the rest, / So wondrous Trim; / You would swear she was a Hick, / And no common Brim.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 323: You would swear she was a Hick, / And no common Brim.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. n.p.: brim or Brimstone, a very impudent, lewd Woman.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) II 63: Soon as they felt his strokes and thwacks, / The brims all fell upon their backs.
1768		Gentleman’s Bottle-Companion 18: Then how to conceal it from Juno his wife, / As arrant a brim as ever was born.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 25: That red-hair’d, broad-stern’d, bouncing brim.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: brim (abbreviation of brimstone) an abandoned woman; perhaps originally only a passionate or irascible woman, compared to brimstone for its inflammability.
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 136: And as the kelter runs quite flush, / Like natty shining kiddies, / To treat the coaxing, giggling brims, / With spunk let’s post our neddies.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 161: The brim’s an errant whore.
1808		Jamieson Etym. Dict. Scot. Lang. n.p.: Brim, a cant term for a trull, Loth.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1833		‘Ye Rakehells So Jolly’ in Swell!!! or, Slap-Up Chaunter 26: While thus cherry merry, let Harris and Derry, With faces uncommon supply us; / Poll French and Bet Weyms, and such batter’d old brims, / Ye pimps, let them never come nigh us.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 48/2: Brim (Thieves’). A fearless woman of the town.
1914		E. Wittmann ‘Clipped Words’ in DN IV:ii 119: brim, i.e. brimstone. [...] 2. A prostitute.

2. (also brimmer) a termagant.

1785, 1796, 1811		see sense 1.
1799		Whim of the Day n.p.: She raved, she abused me, and splenetic was; She’s a vixen, she’s a brim, zounds! She’s all that is bad [F&H].
1823		‘Jon Bee’ A Dict. of the Turf, The Ring, The Chase, etc. 17: Brimstone — female only; one who fires away at the first strike [...] Brim and Brimmer — are but abbreviations of the same.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 85: Brim a violent irascible woman, as inflammable and unpleasant as brimstone, from which the word is contracted.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.