"If you'll take thunder and lightening, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix 'em up, and put 'em into a woman, that's jasm."

Wrote J.G. Holland in "Miss Gilbert's Career," published in 1860, the oldest historical use of the U.S. slang word "jasm," which means "Energy, spirit, ‘pep,'" according to the Oxford English Dictionary (which, unfortunately, I can't link to). I clicked on "jasm," because I was reading about the origin of the word "jazz," for an earlier post, where I noted that I had believed that the word "jazz" originally referred to sexual intercourse. That chronology is unlikely, according to the OED, and in fact, the word "jazz" first appeared in baseball.

But this "jasm" definition gives the etymology: "Apparently a variant of jism." Now, come on. That has to be sexual. But jism originally meant "energy, strength," going back to 1842:
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