Other forms: jury-rigged
To jury-rig is to rig something up roughly so it works for now. Jury-rig a repair, jury-rigged together, a jury-rigged aerial.
The jury in it has nothing to do with a court, since a jury mast was a temporary mast raised after the real one went. It is a different word from jerry-built, which means badly built from the start.
1verbjury-rigTo rig something up roughly so it works for now.
“The sailors had to jury-rig a mast from a spare pole after the storm.”
jury-rig is a improvising.
From jury in the nautical sense of temporary, as in a jury mast, plus rig; in use since at least 1788.
Built from
From jury + rig. Likely modelled after jurymast. The phrase jury-rigged has been in use since at least 1788. The adjectival use of jury (“makeshift or temporary”), has been said to date from at least 1616, when according to the 1933 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, it appeared in John Smith's A Description of New England. It appeared in Smith's more extensive The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles published in 1624.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Repair & Damage