Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise: The survivors of the wreck jury-rigged some fishing gear.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Nautical, a temporary rig when the permanent rig has been disabled.
Wiktionary
- v. nautical, transitive To make an improvised rigging or assembly from whatever is available.
- v. transitive To create a makeshift, ad hoc solution from resources at hand.
- n. nautical An improvised rigging.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. to rig for temporary service; to construct flimsily and in makeshift fashion. See jury, a.
Etymologies
- From jurymast + rig. (Wiktionary)
- From jury-rig, jury-rigging, improvised rigging on a ship, modeled on jury-mast, temporary mast, perhaps ultimately from Old French ajurie, help, from aider, to help; see aid. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It was nice to be able to be generous with time, and not have to be rushing to jury-rig things.”
“Buddy and his crew know how to jury-rig it themselves, and soon the cookie line is up and running again.”
The Wall Street Journal: Who Needs an MBA When We Have 'Dog the Bounty Hunter'?
“I did manage to get HU comments delivered to my email account with a jury-rig setup involving FeedDemon and the Mozilla email client.”
“But after watching BP's efforts to jury-rig a huge upside-down funnel over the spill, and learning just how long it will take to drill a relief well that BP had previously promised could be started "in a few days," it seems to me that what's really like "open-heart surgery in the dark" is deepwater drilling for oil itself.”
The Huffington Post: Carl Pope: "Like Open-Heart Surgery in the Dark"
“After watching BP's efforts to jury-rig a huge upside-down funnel over the spill, it seems to me that what's really like "open-heart surgery in the dark" is deepwater drilling for oil itself.”
The Huffington Post: Carl Pope: "Like Open-Heart Surgery in the Dark"
“He rails against standardized curricula and shows how unstructured classroom time can allow for priceless discoveries, like when he facilitated an impromptu mission to jury-rig a ramp so his kindergarten class turtle could climb a level of stairs.”
The Huffington Post: Dan Brown: Bill Ayers is Back... with a Brilliant Graphic Novel
“Wolfe recalled how he and Dr. Goetzmann decided to spice up the social life for the doctoral students by having them get together, jury-rig their own rickshaws, and have plenty of gin on hand for race day motivation.”
The Washington Post: The Kandy Kolored Rickshaw Test (VAROOOOOM!)
“As part of the event, the 20-somethings had to jury-rig their rickshaws for the competition.”
The Washington Post: Pulitzer-winning historian William Goetzmann dies at 80
“After a rough boat trip out and a jury-rig for our maimed 15hp engine, we were psyched to arrive inside the small reef surrounding Magaruque Island.”
“They reminded me of the time in the Congo when Dad had to jury-rig a new windshield for the Land Rover and had cut the glass himself. . .”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘jury-rig’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Steampunk
Words used quite often in steampunk
ansible, airship, chymical, valve, clockwork, dirigible, thaumaturgy, copper, bronze, difference engine, gear, rivets and 516 more...
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hasty amateur manufacture
fudging it
wangle, fudge, parry, hedge, merganser, coddle, sidestep, duck, dodge, unworkmanlike pra..., botch, bungle and 13 more...
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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Words I Learned After Reading The Mom...
indigent, kudzu, ingrate, pernicious, fungible, panopticon, Medea, bereft, bilge, upbraid, dicker, procreatrix and 31 more...
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New Words
tra la!
Tweets
Looking for tweets for jury-rig.
frindley Not to be confused with jerry-built. May 9, 2011
arby To rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise: The survivors of the wreck jury-rigged some fishing gear.
ETYMOLOGY: From jury-rigging, improvised rigging on a ship, modeled on jury-mast, temporary mast, perhaps ultimately from Old French ajurie, help, from aider, to help. Oct 17, 2007