Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a feeling of uneasiness, a feeling of depression.

1835		Metropolitan Mag. 14 114: There is an indescribable complaint, which will never allow a moment’s repose to mind or body; which nothing will satisfy [...] which wheels round the mind like a squirrel in its cage, ever moving, but still making no progress. It is called the Fantods.
1839		C.F. Briggs Adventures of Harry Franco I 249: You have got strong syptoms of the fantods; your skin is so tight you can’t shut your eyes without opening your mouth.
1867		W.H. Smyth Sailor’s Word-Bk (1991) 289: Fantods. A name given to the fidgets of officers.
1876		Arizona Sentinel (Yuma) 11 Mar. 3/2: The Editor is not well. He has the fan-tods, mully-grubs, [...] neuralgia, oldragia, or something else.
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn 66: I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. [...] By and by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods.
1885		Yorks. Gaz. 8 Aug. 4/4: Lord Ripon’s fantods have caused the Empire a deficit of £1,500,000.
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 336: Moreover, it done gives Dan Boggs the fan-tods.
1898		E. Dyson ‘The Trucker’s Dream’ in Below and On Top 🌐 ‘Drame,’ d’ye call it? [...] I thought you had the buckin’ fantods; you howled like a madman.’.
1908		E.S. Sorenson Quinton’s Rouseabout 116: This ain’t no jim-jams, I ain’t tasted a drop since five months ago, when I got blind drunk at Paddy Flynn’s; an’ I didn’t see any jumpin’ fantods then.
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 13 Dec. 4/8: We’d never face beaks / And cheek the police, / Chase fantods and freaks, / Gohannas and geese.
1913		Sun (Kalgoorlie) 2 Feb. 1/1: They say [...] That her heroics shouted in rehearsal are worse than a touch of the ‘fantods’.
1916		T. Burke Limehouse Nights 305: Old man’s got the fair fantods to-night.
1928		Capricorn (Rockhampton, Qld) 20 Dec. 18/4: With bottles emptied, nine of ten, he’d roused himself to sing... / [...] Before you could as much as sneeze, / the fantods brought their king.
c.1930		(ref. to 1868) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 61: He called me a country jake with the fantods.
1934		D.L. Sayers Nine Tailors (1984) 251: I’m not what you call fanciful in a general way, but there was something about the bells that gave me the fantods.
1940		E. O’Neill Iceman Cometh Act I: You and the other bums have begun to give me the graveyard fantods.
1952		W.R. Burnett Little Men, Big World 52: What the hell’s wrong with me? [...] I got the fantods, or something?
1967		C. Dair Design with Type (2001) n.p.: He has a root-canal case of the fantods. His sphincter is fluttering, he is breaking out in a sour sweat.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 113: Apropos of the Watergate ‘fantods’ – I will not even comment on your feeble humor.
1987		J. Ciardi Good Words 113: The Fantods. The condition of being unstrung, ill at ease.
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. (Aus.) alcoholic hallucinations; delirium tremems.

1910

Sun. Times (Perth) 31 July 2nd sect. 9/2: They Say [...] That having got on a load of fusel fan tods be was locked in his brother’s bedroom.