Word.ws English Dictionary

stim

UK/stɪm/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/stəm/

stim noun: sensory stimulation.

stim: sensory stimulation
Image: Disabledandhere, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

stim (plural stims)

  1. (informal, uncountable) Sensory stimulation.
    • “Electric therapy has been used in medicine for thousands of years,” says Ken Rusche, director of Wellington Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center, a physical therapist and athletic trainer. “[…] Electrical stim is being used in the field of medicine for rehabilitation and strengthening after...1986 January, Joan Fox, “Can You Get Tanned and Trim Without Sun or Exercise?”, in Cincinnati, volume 19, number 4, →ISSN, page 102
  2. (autism) Any repetitive self-stimulatory behavior (e.g. hand flapping, head banging, repeating noises or words), frequent in autistic people.
    • Autistic people often stim with the help of technologies such as music and stim toys or tools to mediate between inner worlds and outer environments that may over/underwhelm us. […] At the beginning of March 2020, I discovered that many of the stims I regularly turned to were no longer accessible.2021, Erin Felepchuk, “Stimming, Improvisation, and COVID-19: (Re)negotiating Autistic Sensory Regulation During a Pandemic”, in Disability Studies Quarterly, volume 41, number 3, archived from the...
  3. (countable) Any drug that stimulates a woman's ovaries to produce eggs.

Verb

stim (third-person singular simple present stims, present participle stimming, simple past and past participle stimmed)

  1. (intransitive) To perform such a repetitive self-stimulatory action.
    • Autistic people often stim with the help of technologies such as music and stim toys or tools to mediate between inner worlds and outer environments that may over/underwhelm us.2021, Erin Felepchuk, “Stimming, Improvisation, and COVID-19: (Re)negotiating Autistic Sensory Regulation During a Pandemic”, in Disability Studies Quarterly, volume 41, number 3, archived from the...

Noun (2)

stim (plural stims)

  1. (slang) Synonym of stimulant (“drug”).
    Synonyms:
    stimulant

Noun (3)

stim (plural stims)

  1. (Ireland, rare) A whit or jot; the least amount.
    • That boy hasn't a stim of common sense.
    • [I]f she wishes to see them at their sport, she has only to make a ring out of a thraneen, and look at them through it, and she will see them in all their bravery with their fox-glove caps and green jerkins, capering to the sound of a bag-pipe, with a lurikeen playing it, and he sitting on a fairy...1869, Patrick Kennedy, Evenings in the Duffrey, Dublin: M'Glashan and Gill, page 6

Synonyms of stim

Forms of stim

Noun
pluralstims
Verb
third-person singular presentstims
present participlestimming
past participlestimmed
paststimmed

Origin of stim

Clipping of stimulation or stimulate.

Clipping of stimulant.

Likely related to Scots stime; both perhaps from Old English scima (“shine”).

Words formed from stim

Phrases with stim

Words that rhyme with stim

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stim

What does stim mean?
Stim means sensory stimulation.
What part of speech is stim?
Stim can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce stim?
Stim is pronounced /stɪm/ (UK).
What is the plural of stim?
The plural of stim is stims.

Words near stim in the dictionary

  1. stilyaga
  2. stilyagas
  3. stilyagi
  4. stilyard
  5. stilyards
  6. stim
  7. stim board
  8. stim boards
  9. stim pack
  10. stim packs
  11. stim toy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stim (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-stim.ogg.

Cite this entry: “stim.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stim. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.