J Words
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on December 5, 2007 – 10:03 AM182 Comments
1. Something that is built haphazardly/slapped together/makeshift is:
a) jury-rigged; b) jerry-rigged
Both appear in the 11c; “jury-rigged” is the older construction. Which do you use?
2. Something that is built hastily/built poorly/looks cheap is:
a) jank/janky/janked; b) jenk/jenky/jenked
Neither appears in the 11C. Which of these do you use?
Just curious about the usage pattern on these; feel free to post your location/your hometown in the comments, in case it’s trackable. I usually say “jury-rigged” (or “jerry-built”), but if my father said “jerry-rigged,” it would sound more like “jury-rigged” because he’s got that Philly flavor. And I usually say “jank,” but if I add the Y, I say “jenky” instead.
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Tags: Ask The Readers grammar
1: Jury-rigged
2: Janky, but the way I say it kinda wanders into “jenky” territory sometimes and I’ve never used the jank/jenk or janked/jenked constructions.
SF Bay Area
1 – jury-rigged
2 – I’ve heard “jacked up”, but don’t use it. Craptastic is what I tend to say for that sort of thing. I don’t even know why – I must have heard/read it somewhere…
Central VA more or less.
1. I definitely think of what I’m saying as “jury-rigged”. But it sounds a lot more like “jerry-rigged,” the way I pronounce it. So, um… both?
2. Neither.
I’m from Houston.
I grew up in Sacramento, California.
1. Jerry-rigged
2. Neither. Never heard those terms before!
I say “jerry-rigged” — but probably because I think of it as a synonym to “gerrymandered.” Not sure why.
Never heard the others growing up.
18 years in MO, 7 in MA, 3 in ME, 1 in DC (or, for parallelism purposes, MD?)
1) I can’t think of any times I’ve actually used the term, but I think I’d originally known the term as “jerry-rigged”, and had thought it might have been a corruption of “jury-rigged”. I had also heard (as others have mentioned) that it was related to the un-PC term “Jerry”, although it would seem whatever my source for that was was wrong.
2) Never heard of either term.
I grew up in southeastern CT, and lived briefly in a few other places that probably had little influence over my vocabulary.
Also? Hinky IS an excellent term, and I am impressed someone has verbified it.
@Colleen – It reminded me of “jinkies!” too!
Born & raised in southern VA, for what it’s worth…
1). Jerry-rigged, both spoken and written. I’d never heard of jury-rigged before your post.
2). My mom has always said that things that look cheap are “janky- looking,” and my brothers and I used to make fun of her for using old-timer speak, because it wasn’t part of our lexicon. However, in the past few years, I’ve heard (and said) “that shit is jank,” with the same meaning Sars uses in her above post.
I say “jerry-rigged” and “janky”. I was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Colorado, and am now in Pittsburgh.
(I think my propensity toward “janky” is highly affected by hanging out with Magic: the Gathering players during high school/college/postcollege, since they use “janky” all the time to describe really bad cards that somehow manage to succeed. Or bad players who do the same thing.)
Jerry-rigged
Never heard of jenked or janked
-southern California born and raised
1) Jury-rigged.
2) I’ve heard/seen these terms just recently, but have never used them.
(Born in the Providence area, spent a lot of time in upstate New York and Houston).
Chicago born and raised, and I use jury-rigged and janky, although I have to say that I only started using janky in the last year or so. I blame the Internet. It’s just, janky has the right sound for what it is, you know? Crappy construction makes a “jank” sound. In my head.
I pronounce it jury-rigged but I think if I were to write it out, it would be jerry-rigged.
I’ve never heard of jank/jenk etc and I wish I had because my boss’s last name is in one of those words and it would be funny to make fun of him for that. (Sez the girl whose last name is one letter away from a word meaning “mistake” or “error.” Or “wacky.” But you know, if you’ve had to take it your whole life, you’re eager to dish it out.)
I grew up primarily in the suburbs of DC, with the parental flavas of Pittsburgh and the New York Jew diaspora.
(1) Jerry-rigged
(2) Not familiar with the words.
Another Brit here (from southwest England), and I’d never heard “jury-rigged” in this country. When I ran into it online I’d assumed it was an error.
I grew up in southwestern Ohio, and lived there until i was 21. I’ve been in Chicago for the last 8 years.
1) I think I’ve used both jury-rigged and jerry-rigged – i wouldn’t choose one over the other. More likely jury-rigged, though.
2) I, too, am not really famililiar with jenk/jank. I think I’ve heard it (probably since moving to Chicago), but it isn’t a term I’d use. I’d probably go with junky, shoddy or chintzy, depending on context.
Jury-rigged and janky here in MA.
Hinky I also like, but tend to use ‘hoopy” more. not the same meaning, but it’s just one that I loooooove.
Jerry-rigged, though I’ve heard jury-rigged and don’t think it’s too weird.
My dialect doesn’t have any of the jank- words.
Jerry-rigged. From Texas. I will say, the implication was not that something jerry rigged is bad per se, just not done the standard way. Along the same lines is also the politically incorrect “ghetto rigged” and excessively incorrect “n- rigged” that pop up south of the Mason Dixon as well. I don’t know how common these are, though, outside of aging redneck usage.
Jank/Janked is terminology I didn’t pick up until I went to grad school and spent time around Chicagoans (Chicagoites? what the hell do you call those people) and that form was “jankity.” As in “Dude, buy a better southern blot rig, this one’s all jankity.”
1) Jerry-rigged – I’m originally from Utah, from a family that is of British extraction. I like the explanation here: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/211600.html.
2) Never heard of either of these phrases, so I’m of no help here.
Jury-rigged.
Never heard of the other one, so no idea.
(Born/raised in southern NYS but mother from Illinois; currently in Chicagoland)
1) Jury-rigged. Never gave it much though about why.
2) Jank/janky/janked. Jenky to me sounds like Velma’s exclamation from Scooby Doo (Jinkies! It’s Old Man Weathers!). And, yes, I do use jinkies in conversation.
I’m in Alabama, but don’t really claim many southern usages.
1) Jury-rigged (I think. I’ve said them both to myself so much now that they both sound strange and foreign.)
2) Never heard of any of them until today.
Canadian of British/Irish parentage.
I’ve always used jerry-rigged. Grew up in Virginia. Never heard of the second one before right now.
1. I hadn’t ever thought about it, but the rare time I have had occasion for the phrase, I’ve gone with “jerry-rigged”.
2. Never used either of those words. I would be more likely to pronounce something “wack”, but Kriss-Kross was really popular during my formative years, so that explains that.
I’ve spent the majority of my life in Florida, with some brief escape attempts to Texas, Maine and California.
1. jerry-rigged, I think. I’ve never written it, but I think that’s how I say it.
2. Jank/janky, or jankety.
Grew in up the “greater Chicagoland area,” live in the city proper now.
I grew up in RI: jury-rigged and janky.
My husband, who grew up in rural West Virginia, said that the expression when he was a kid was n***er-rigged. Nice example of how to casually pass-on racism, isn’t it? (To be fair, I have never heard anyone say this in any of my trips there and I think it may have died out, at least in normal converstaion).
I’m from the Detroit area and am only familiar with jury-rigged and janky (though I’d actually never even heard or used janky until about a year ago, actually).
1. Jerry-rigged
2. None of the above.
St. Louis, MO by way of Louisiana, Maine, Illinois, and Western Missouri.
1. Jerry-rigged
2. None of the above. I’ve heard of jacked up but not jenked or jenked. Regional, perhaps? I see what you mean though about Jacked meaning broken, rather than cheap. Interesting.
Oh, and I grew up in Oregon, lived in NY for 5+ years, now live in Boston. Forgot to say that.
1. jury-rigged. Though I’ve heard it all sorts o’ ways.
2. never heard of any of these variations.
Grew up in Munich and, since moving back stateside, have lived on both coasts and some places in between. Parents are from California but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of my family use any of these terms. :)
1. jury-rigged
2. never heard of jank or jenk
i’m from CA, by way of VA, with NY-born parents
1) I use either, but I think I developed the idea somewhere along the line that ‘jerry-rigged’ was racist somehow, so I’m careful about when I use it. Don’t know where I got that idea from.
2) I never heard ‘janky’ until I started watching “Tori & Dean: Inn Love”, cause Tori says it all the time, and now I do too.
I’m originally from Pittsburgh, PA, but have lived in the Silicon Valley, CA since 88.
ps. @bristlesage: I HATE that “needs done” thing. Everyone says that here in Maryland. It drives me batty. I’m all: “Just….add…..the verb…..TO BEEEEE…..”
Heh heh. I guess that’s a PA/MD/VA thing? AUGH my ears.
If it were something that worked, but was just done in a hurry,out of seemingly unsuitable materials, etc., I’d call it jury-rigged. On the other hand, something that is made of shoddy materials is jerry-built. That may have something to do with my love of British mysteries, where I picked up jerry-built to begin with. Jank I’m not familiar with at all, but I’m from the Southwest and my parents were from the West and South.
1. Jerry-rigged (though in Tennessee I grew up hearing a much uglier, disgusting, racist version), I thought it was from WWI when the soldiers called the Germans “Jerry.” I might have just made that up, though.
2. Never heard of that one.
1) I grew up in western PA and have always said “jury-rigged”
2) I have only heard this since living in the San Francisco area, and only in the past maybe nine months at that, but I say “janky” or, occasionally, when I want my slang to be even more slang-y, “jank.”
1) Jury-rigged.
2) Never heard those before.
Canadian, Southern Ontario. :)
1. Definitely “jerry-rigged.”
2. Never heard of that, either!
I’m from Baltimore, MD.
1. I say jury-rigged. But I’m kind of sad to learn that “jerry-rigged” isn’t an un-pc term. I always assumed someone made it up during WWII as a morale booster, though I guess given the Germans’ engineering skills, it would have been kind of an inaccurate one.
2. Never heard of those either. Must be a yankee thing?
But “hinked out” I like!
1. Jury-rigged if it comes up, but I’m more likely to just say “makeshift”
2. Janky, but it’s not really part of my regular usage.
I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, lived in Toronto for 5 years and am in Vancouver now, so you can basically put me down as “various Canadian cities”.
1. Jerry-rigged.
2. Never used either. I would instead use “wonky” if instability was a factor, and “sketchy/sketch” if mere cheapness was the issue. “Skievy” (sp?) in cases of skin-crawling cheapness (as in a store-bought Halloween costumes).
I’m originally from Long Island, but have lived for significant amounts of time in Connecticut, Florida, London, and Dublin. I now reside in Manhattan.
I’m from Austin (parents are both from Northern California, though) and I always say Jerry Rigged.
And I’ve never heard/used either of the options for question 2.
Will you be posting the findings in a future post?
I’m from the Midwest
1. Jury-rigged.
2. Never heard this before so, uh, neither. :)
Like some of the other Texans, I’d heard the much uglier version of jury/jerry-rigged as a kid. Growing up, I pronounced it jerry-rigged, but at some point saw the word jury-rigged written down and adjusted my pronunciation to fit that.
Never heard any variation on jank/janky/janked, either when growing up in Texas or over the ten years I’ve lived in Boston.
1) Jerry-rigged.
2) None of them
From Virginia currently living in Atlanta.
I say Jerry-rigged and janky I’m from the south Jersey/Philly area.
I say jury-rigged and janky.
I’m from San Diego, but I definitely picked up “janky” while at school in Northern California.
1. Jerry-rigged
2. Like many of those before me, I’ve never heard jenk/jank/etc before in my life. I suppose I’d say shoddy, cheap, junk, crap, or some such thing.
I live in Chicago now (a different part than those above me who have heard these words?) and I used to live in Minnesota (Twin Cities) and Wisconsin.
1) jerry-rigged (although I can’t really pronounce it that well, I always thought it was spelled this way)
2) janky
Never heard of the jenk version, and don’t use jank/janked. Hmm.
Grew up in Boston and moved to SF after college.