In one of those Latin stories about Hercules, it says the Hydra's poison had "vim", a word I haven't heard for a long time. Always in cliché "Vim and vigor". I wonder if the cliché arose as one of duplications so common in the English law .
and how does it relate to "voom"?
vim - voom - ?
I took a quick peek in my tiny print OED1, and find out that vim is an Americanism. First time in print 1850 and used by itself as an adverb. (I don't have the quote to hand, sorry.) Maybe somebody with access to the OED2 or 3, can take a look and see what the newer scholarship on the word is. OED1 suggested that it was not the acc. of vis but imitative in origin.
My pleasure, nuncle:
vim1
orig. U.S.
[Commonly regarded as a. L. vim, acc. sing. of vis strength, energy; but the early adverbial use (see quot. 1850) suggests a purely imitative or interjectional origin.]
Force or vigour, energy, ‘go’. †Also as adv., vigorously, sharply.
1843 Yale Lit. Mag. VIII. 406 He would have acted out his real nature with all the vim and pathos which heroes always manifest in like circumstances. 1850 Odd Leaves 51 (Thornton), He thought of his spurs, so he ris up, an' drove them vim in the hoss's flanx. Ibid. 91. 1875 New York Herald 17 April (Bartlett), With a vim and determination that sometimes makes victory half assured. 1876 F. L. Galt in Orton Andes & Amazons ii. xliv. 586 [The Portuguese] seem still to carry about the vim of a Vasco de Gama in their wanderings. 1880 Johnson W. L. Garrison 128 There was+a Garrisonian grip and vim in the anti-slavery sentiment of the county. 1894 Outing XXIV. 259/1 He fought well and with a vim that I have never seen equaled.
(and the def for the proprietary Lever Bros name is dated to the Trade Mark Journal of 1894)
OED2