That is the question.
My WAG:
I think “jerry-rigged” isn’t correct, although a lot of people seem to use it nowadays. I think it’s “jerry-built”, and “jury-rigged”.
"Jerry-Built is of unknown origin according to my OED, and a “jury-rig” is of nautical origin. It is a temporary rig fixed to a “jury-mast”, which is the remains of a broken mast.
I don’t find the site very well documented, but that is just one man’s opinion. I’ve always thought that it was gerry-rigged as in gerrymander, the drawing of bizarre political district lines that would “meander” and named after a fellow named Gerry who was somehow connected with the Tamney Hall political machine in New York.
I think the “mander” part is from salamander (all twisty and such, just like the voting district created to ensure our friend Mr. Gerry won the election.)
DPWhite Those of us who have an extra interest in etymology and have taken the time to build a library, investigate claims that various websites make, etc. would agree that Worldwidewords is one of the more reliably researched sites out there.
How did you come to the idea in under 20 minutes that the website wasn’t “well-documented?”
You said
The OP was probably hoping for better than “I’ve always thought…”
My opinion is based on having seen a bunch of these word history articles elsewhere which trace back to first usage, show additional usages, all in context. I didn’t see this in the one entry I looked at. It didn’t have a feeling of authoritativeness to it. This is just my opinion. They may well be right, but jury-rigging seems to me to have a rather precise meaning, namely the felony of jury tampering. Article doesn’t deal with that.
DPW Sorry to have sounded so churlish, on my part. Try Word Detective for a rather similar treatment of the subject. That is the site of Evan Morris, who is also one of the top five sites giving “straight dope” about word origins.
I think that there really is NO SUCH TERM as “jerry-rigged” and that is what set me off. It is merely a bastardization, and probably rather recent, of two different terms, as you can see from both cites/sites.
Hey, I understand if you work on part of the project it feels a bit personal, which I didn’t mean to be.
Here is what my quick search shows, which a linguist would accept and William Safire wouldn’t:
This Christian Science Monitor site shows more of the type of analysis that as a consumer I am interested in. It confirms that I am wrong, yet the analysis is IMHO superior.
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/03/13/fp21s2-csm.shtml
Here is an article with the kind of usage I remember seeing in the past
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/research/focus/economicSocial/projects/marketFormation.html
And here is an article where a fellow named Gerry (a governor of Massachusetts) “rigged” and election, although it wasn’t associated with Tameny Hall
http://www.freedomparty.org/consent/cons21_2.htm
And here are a few usages of making a contraption in a colloquial article
http://www.italianrap.com/diaspora/friday.html
http://www.digital-web.com/interviews/interview_1999-9.shtml
There is also a lot of usage for jerry rigged out there, but that makes no sense to me at all. But a linguist would accept it. Yuck.
Elbridge Gerry was governor of Massachusetts well before Tammany Hall even existed. He was one of Massachusetts’ delagates to the Constitutional Convention in 1783. A political cartoon way back in the days when he was governor showed a map of a proposed congressional district with lizardlike features added, labelled a “Gerry-mander”.
Since then, the situation has remained much the same, with a Democratic state legislature recently considering a plan to redistrict Democratic congressman Marty Meehan out of his seat.
All this has nothing to do with jury-rigging, though.
DPW Thanks for the tour.
As Cecil starts out his site by saying
A couple of years ago, I went looking for information on this because I was under the impression that jury-rigged' was a bowlderized version of nigger-rigged,’ which was supported by the idea of rigging a jury in a criminal trial. But the explanation I read and settled on was that the jury was from the French jure, meaning `for a day.’ It referred to a temporary repair. Since this theory is not mentioned on the sites posted, I suppose this theory is no longer currently in favor.
“A couple of years ago, I went looking for information on this because I was under the impression that jury-rigged' was a bowlderized version of nigger-rigged,’ which was supported by the idea of rigging a jury in a criminal trial.”
Why would the term “jury-rigged” have to come by way of such a (non-existent) term?! There were rigged juries in England when cases involved only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (though not always WASPs 
) and if we ever achieve a completely color-blind society there will still be instances, or at least claims, of rigged juries.
Or is this just an example of the PC-think that every negative slang or colloquial term must somehow trace back to racism – think the phoney “picnic” etomology?
The term “nigga-rigged” does exist. However, it’s most certainly a bastardization of “jury-rigged”, and not the other way around. I’d guess there’s a little racial slur action going on, but its just as much that it happens to rhyme. Go figure.
You can find “jury rig (-ged)” quite often in yachting mags referring to cruising or racing sailboats that lose their mast over the side (of the boat) due to a failure of the standing rigging (you know, the cables/rods that stabilize the entire rig).
Some are able to recover part of the mast and supporting cabling and fashion a “jury-rig” from the salvaged parts and onboard emergency parts. From these jury rigs, they’re able to fly sails that have been cutdown in size to fit the new rig so the vessel is able to limp into a port for more suitable repairs.
(Still have no idea where the word “jury” has crept into this meaning.)
’Uigi If you read my link in my first post above, you will find the answer to where “jury” probably crept in.
The French term ajurie meaning aid/help/relief/assistance is probably involved. Remember, you are dealing with a term (jury rigged) which goes back over 400 years.
Johnny Angel, John Bredin The term “nigger-rigged” was certainly found in print, mainly in the 1960’s and 1970’s in etymological sources, i.e. DARE Many of the reference indicate it was strictly a Southern expression, traceable to at least the 1940’s and meant “to assemble or repair hastily or poorly, from whatever material.” So it certainly was related to “jury-rigged” in that sense, just a few hundred years later.
Although the argument about “jury-rigged” has support and makes a whole lot of sense, I do not think that “gerry-rigged” is simply a misuse of that term. During the Second World War the Germans were known as Gerry and toward the last of the war they were running low on spare parts and their equipment was getting the crap beat out of it. So anyone that was handy with a piece of wire or tape fixed things as best they could. Where I learned the term was from men of the WWII generation and they knew it as Gerry-rigged.
kniz I think that you are sincere. But I also suspect that you were hearing WWII vets saying a word(jury-rigged) and they/you thought it was “gerry/jerry-rigged.” Logical.
They were merely repeating a phrase/word that they heard from their parents/youth which they/you may have interpereted to mean “related to the Germans in WWII.”
Yep! The Germans were running short of materials in the later stages of WWII. Did this have anything to do with the phrase? Probably not. The term “Jerry-rigged” or “Gerry-rigged” just doesn’t make it into print.
Does that mean that your ideas are wrong? No…Just that your hearing of the phrase in the old days just doesn’t have much to do with the actual phrase.
I’m not sure if this comes off as merely informational, or confrontational. I mean it as informational.
I realize you mean no abuse. I will however stick somewhat to my guns because whether it was WWI or WWII to those men it made more sense to say “Gerry-rig”. When I first heard it I thought are they saying “jury-rigged” and then realized that wasn’t what they were saying. This was in southern Ohio, where despite the Ohio River there is little knowledge of sailing. I moved from there to Mississippi where the third term is used most often. Note I did not argue against “jury-rig”, just made a case for why it was turned into “gerry-rig” by some people and thus the confusion in the OP.
Nigger-rigged =
Yep, that’s how I always heard the term used. This was in New Mexico, not the Deep South; and I heard it most often among auto mechanics.
Certainly it was racist; meanwhile, when we watched MacGuyver do his thing with paper clips and a teaspoon of lemon juice and so on, we applauded his ingenuity rather than laughing at the idea of making do with materials found on hand instead of hieing one’s self off to Ace or A-1 and getting The Official Part. I think if you do it well, you should receive kudos and acclaim for your ingenuity, not contempt!