Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Jerry-rigged


 Jerry-rigged: old phrase or new? And how did poor Jerry get tangled into a term that has come to mean cobbled-together?
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Well, according to this nifty post from Merriam-Webster, jerry-rigged, jerry-built, and jury-rigged have a common history. The oldest term, dating from the 18th century, would be jury-rigged, which has nothing to do with courtrooms but with boats:
Jury-rig comes from the adjective jury, meaning "improvised for temporary use especially in an emergency," or "makeshift." It's a 15th century term that comes from the Middle English jory, as known (back then, anyway) in the phrase "jory sail," meaning "improvised sail."
Rig has a similarly nautical background:
The rig in jury-rigged is a 15th century sailing term meaning "to fit out with rigging," with rigging being the lines and chains used in operating a sailing vessel. In the 18th century, if it was jury-rigged it was a boat.
 By the mid-19th century, jerry-built had popped up on the linguistic scene to mean "built cheaply and unsubstantially" as well as "carelessly or hastily put together." As for why jerry, Merriam-Webster adds:
The origin of this word is unknown, though there is plenty of speculation that it's from some poor slob named Jerry...
Jury-rigged and jerry-built morphed sometime in the late 19th century into jerry-rigged, meaning "organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner."

The Online Etymological Dictionary doesn't address jerry-rigged, but does discuss jerry-built, with this fascinating detail on the wherewithal of jerry:
"built hastily of shoddy materials," 1856, in a Liverpool context, from jerry "bad, defective," probably a pejorative use of the male nickname Jerry (a popular form of Jeremy; compare Jerry-sneak "sneaking fellow, a hen-pecked husband" [OED], name of a character in Foote's "The Mayor of Garret," 1764).

Rube Goldberg "self-operating" napkin—jerry-rigged or jerry-built or...??? The jury is out.
Rube Goldberg [Public domain]

2 comments:

Liz V. said...

I pulled out my copy of Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home, to double check. "The Wrens' Quarters, where Judith had lived for the past eighteen months, was a requisitioned block of flats...flung up by some jerry-builder in the nineteen thirties." (p. 479) Nice to know my assumption as to its meaning was correct.

Ann Parker said...

Hi Liz!
It's always great to come across one of the slang-o-rama terms "in the wild." :-)