Whilst we were sitting around a bar table yesterday discussing life, the Universe and everything someone claimed that the word jerk (as used in the title of this thread) is derived from the Swedish name Jerker (a pet form for Eric BTW) and of Minnesotan origin. Does anyone have the straight dope on this? Merriam-Webster didn’t cover it.
The derivation is correct on the name aspect.
It would seem there is no connection of the name to the common meanings of jerk today however.
Nah. It’s a shortened and associated meaning from jerkwater. Short-run locomotives that served only the local areas frequently carried very little water, rquiring them to stop rather frequently to refill. The water tanks were usually near sidings or small stations and the water was procured by “jerking” the hose down to the boiler tank (much in the manner of the spigot at a bar or soda fountain that gave us soda jerk).
The towns and the trains that served them came to be called jerkwater towns and jerkwater trains and jerkwater became synonymous with insignificant (and, with the usual opprobrium attached to small farming communities, extended to uneducated or foolish). (Late 19th century.)
Jerkwater was then applied to people who were supposed to come from such backward places, and later shortened to jerk. (Early 20th century.)
Some time in the 1940s or 1950s, it picked up the nastier meaning that is employed in the SDMB, rules, “Don’t be a jerk,” (i.e., a small-minded, petty, person whose behavior is offensive).
The “small town resident” to “dumb farmer” to “nasty person” transformation of words is fairly common, in English, with boor and churl following the same path.
There may be some inoffensie Minnesotan farmer named Jerker, but he did not lend his name to the word.
Thanks to both.