Answer: The Difference Between Jury-Rigged and Jerry-Built

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

sidlj asked about the proper usage of "jury-rigged" and "jerry-built", and I thought, 'Ha! I know this one!', but I also discovered that something that I'd thought I'd known was wrong. Who'd a thunk?

Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay will assist with today's explanations.



The site thefreedictionary.com gives this definition of jury-rig:

To rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise:
From jury-rig, jury-rigging, improvised rigging on a ship, modeled on jury-mast, temporary mast, perhaps ultimately from Old French ajurie.

Fannish Example #1:

Sam's ability to jury-rig repairs to DHDs while under fire was deeply appreciated by her fellow-members of SG-1.

Merriam-Webster Online defines jerry-built thus:

Built cheaply and unsubstantially; carelessly or hastily put together
Origin unknown
First Known Use: 1869

Fannish example #2:

Rodney despised shoddy engineering at the best of times, but a jerry-built Genii atomic bomb filled him with horror as well as contempt.

Both words refer to something roughly put together and temporary, but they have quite different shades of meaning.

Something that is jury-rigged works for the purpose. If you jury-rig a solution, you have acted with initiative, self-sufficiency, or cleverness to create something useful and helpful.

Something that is jerry-built was always a piece of rubbish and unfit for its purpose. When I first met this expression I assumed that it came out of the insulting WW2 slang referring to Germans as 'jerries' (I read a lot of my brother's Commando! comics at the time I first met 'jerry-built'), but the phrase actually goes back to the nineteenth century. A wander through a borrowed Shorter Oxford Dictionary reveals that 'jerry' also had meanings of 'to shake or tumble', a jerry-shop was a rough tavern, and jerry was also short for 'jeroboam' (which among other things was slang for a chamber pot).

For added confusion, jerry-rigged has also entered the language, and Merriam Webster Online defines it thus:

Organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner - 'a jerry–rigged plan'
Probably blend of jerry-built and jury-rigged
First Known Use: 1959

In summary, jury-rigged is generally a neutral or even positive term, and jerry-built is an insult. I racked my brain for a mnemonic; perhaps remembering that juries and justice are generally regarded as a good thing might help with jury-rigged at least.

Comments

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

Jerry-rigged hasn't yet reached NZ, so I was all 0_o when I discovered there was another variation. :-)