stim n.
a (chemical) stimulant; something containing a stimulant; see also stim pill, stimtab
Earliest in stim pill n.
OED records an 1882 example in the sense ‘an alcoholic drink’.
Drugs
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[1948 Mandark in The Shaver Mystery Magazine vii. 8
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Richard S. Shaver
Too, she learned how to appear vastly more beautiful by playing steadily over herself a flood of antique sex-stimulative rays, the ‘stim’ of modern secret science.]
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1950 The Merchant of Venus in Other Worlds Nov. 45/1
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Richard Ashby
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I reached into a nearby drawer and took out a handful of stim pills which I began eating like candy. They nerved me to change the distasteful subject.
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1953 Power Metal in Other Worlds June 13/2
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S. J. Byrne
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What kind of stims do you smoke?
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1970 Whipping Star in Worlds of If Jan. 8/2
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Frank Herbert
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He examined his toolkit—a selection of stims, plastipicks, explosives in various denominations, raygens, multigoggles, penetrates, a wad of uniflesh, solvos, miniputer, [etc.].
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1985 Chapterhouse: Dune xii. 86
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Frank Herbert
bibliography
She sampled the drink. Stimtea and melange! I’m hungry. Lucilla returned an empty glass to the tray. The stim on her tongue smelled sharply of melange.
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1996 Blowup in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 18
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Astrid Julian
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Lanie Graham, Station’s doctor…handed Charlotte two small envelopes, one blue and one yellow, each filled with metabolic regulators to help the commissioners adjust to the long lunar night. ‘Start them on the first yellow tablet after lunch. Food will help absorb the first jolt of the day-stims. The blue tablets at bedtime.’
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2010 Bio-Weapon xv. 89
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Vaughn Heppner
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Halfway there he palmed another stim, knowing the price his body would soon demand, or even worse that he would give himself a heart attack.
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2013 I Can Transform You in J. Shurin The Big Book of Cyberpunk (2023) 708
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Maurice Broaddus
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They had made a name for themselves as major Stim traffickers, and Duppy had hooked up with them. High on Stim, he proved less reasonable than usual.
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2019 The Hollow Mountain (Warhammer 40,000: Vaults of Terror) vi. 63
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Chris Wraight
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Of course, few living humans had ever laid eyes on a porcine. Unless they worked on an agri world, they would never have encountered one of those bloated and obese sacks of stimm-injected muscle and sinew, too colossal to walk without breaking their spindly legs and force-fed high-nutrient chemsoup to keep them growing in the pens.
Research requirements
antedating 1953
Earliest cite
S. J. Byrne, in Other Worlds
Research History
Clive Shergold submitted a number of cites.
Last modified 2026-03-10 13:03:34
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.