When was the word "anime" first used in the US?

[furryman]

I definitely recall seeing it around 1990. Was it around prior to that?

[Omi no Kami]

Online etymology dictionary's earliest known entry in the english corpus is listed as 1985, and they suspect it originated in the early 1970s. For my money, when I rewrote the constitution for my university's anime club I pulled our original articles of incorporation from 1983, and "anime" was used fairly frequently throughout.

[RealityChuck]

The time frame sounds right. It was still called Japanimation back in 1983, when I first attended Lunacon. I may have heard "anime" about that time, but it wasn't the common term.