jasm

See also: JASM

English

Etymology

Apparently a variant of jism.

Noun

jasm (uncountable)

1. (archaic, US, slang) Zest for accomplishment; drive.

   Jeremy has the kind of jasm a junior exec needs to reach the top of the ladder in the corporate world.

   • 1860, Josiah Gilbert Holland, Miss Gilbert's Career: An American Story, Charles Scribner's Sons, page 350:

     “Yes, sir.  No mistake about that.  Oh! she's just as full of jasm!”
     Frank Sargent laughed again.  “You've got the start of me,” said he.  “Now tell me what ‘jasm’ is.”
     “Well, it’s a sort of word, I guess, that made itself,” said Cheek.  “It’s a good one though—jasm is. If you’ll take thunder and lightning, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix ’em up, and put ’em into a woman, that’s jasm.”

   • 2004 June 30, Elizabeth Cooper, Drusilla with a Million, Kessinger Publishing, page 197:

     I don’t think there is anything more pitiful than a man, who has been in business for himself, to have to give up and say he is a failure. It hurts to be compelled to go into some one’s shop as a clerk or a mechanic when you’ve once been your own master. It’ll put jasm into a lot of men that have lost their nerve and only need some one to set them straight.

2. (archaic) Jazz.

References

• Mathews’ Dictionary of Americanisms, 1951
• Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Random House, 1997

Anagrams

• JAMs, jams