Dictionary

jerrybuild en · VERB

Etymology

Blend of jerry + build; unknown origin; see jerry (possibly etymologically related).

Meanings

1. (transitive) To assemble a project in a hasty, sloppy manner, especially using cheap, inferior or improvised materials.
   • If we look at some of the stories of R. D. Laing's patients in The Politics of Experience it looks as if schizophrenia jerrybuilds a shaky structure of passion and freedom which depends for existence on negation of control and conscious scruple. 1968, Barbara Hardy, chapter 2, in Tellers and Listeners: The Narrative Imagination, London: Bloomsbury, published 2013, page 49:
   • Evolution, for example, isn't rational—and it jerry-builds our bodies. 1999, John Vernon, chapter III, in A Book of Reasons, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 110:
   • Little wonder that corners were cut, bad materials made do for good and jerry-building was one of the curses of the age. 2012, Jerry White, A Great and Monstrous Thing: London in the Eighteenth Century, Harvard University Press, published 2013, Part One, Chapter I, p. 28:
   • It was a queer-looking hovel, built of galvanised iron and kerosene-cans and bark and saplings and bamboo, according to no definite plan, and obviously, to knowing eyes, by one of those masters of the craft of jerry-building […] 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, pages 154–5:
2. To assemble a structure in such an unsafe manner that it is doomed to collapse.
3. To repair a structure in a sloppy or unsafe manner.

Forms

Relateds

jerryrig