Jury rig
Jury rigging refers to makeshift repairs or temporary contrivances, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand. Originally a nautical term, on sailing ships a jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of damage or loss of the original mast.[1]
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Etymology [edit]
The phrase "jury rigged" has been in use since at least 1788.[2] However, the adjectival use of "jury" in the sense of makeshift or temporary dates from at least 1616, when it appeared in John Smith's A Description of New England.[2] It appeared again, in a similar passage, in Smith's more extensive The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles published in 1624.[3][4]
There are several theories about the origin of this usage of "jury":
- From the Latin adjutare ("to aid") via Old French ajurie ("help or relief").[5]
- A corruption of joury mast—i.e. a mast for the day, a temporary mast, being a spare used for the nonce when the mast has been carried away. (From French jour ("a day").)[6]
- Contraction in the nautical tradition for injury
Rigging [edit]
While ships typically carried a number of spare parts (e.g., items such as topmasts), the lower masts, at up to one meter in diameter, were too large to carry spares. So a jury mast could be various things. Ships always carried a variety of spare sails, so rigging the jury mast once erected was mostly a matter of selecting appropriate size. Contemporary drawings and paintings show a wide variety of jury rigs, attesting to the creativity of sailors faced with the need to save their ships. Example jury-rig configurations are:
- A spare topmast
- The main boom of a brig
- To replace the foremast with the mizzenmast: mentioned in W. Brady's The Kedge Anchor (1852)
- The bowsprit set upright and tied to the stump of the original mast.
The jury mast knot is often mentioned as a method to provide the anchor points for securing makeshift stays and shrouds to the new mast. However, there is a lack of hard evidence regarding the knot's actual historical use.[7]
Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and get replacement masts.
Similar phrases [edit]
- The phrase "jerry-built" has a separate origin and implies shoddy workmanship not necessarily of a temporary nature.[8][1][9]
- Bricolage is building from what happens to be available.
- To "MacGyver" something is to rig up something in a hurry using materials at hand, from the title character of the U.S. television show of the same name, who specialised in such improvisation stunts.[10]
- The Finnish language uses the term itäkätevyys ("Eastern handiness"). It originated during the Cold War, when the Eastern Bloc lacked many commodities the Western world had and were always short on supplies. It describes the inventiveness of the Eastern Europeans in overcoming those handicaps with improvisation and use of unconventional materials.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ a b Israel, Mark (29 September 1997). "jerry-built"/"jury-rigged". alt.usage.english Word Origins FAQ. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
- ^ a b The Oxford English Dictionary, Volume V, H-K (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933; corrected reprinting 1966), 637.
- ^ Captaine Iohn Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (London: Michael Sparkes, 1624; 2006 UNC digital republication), 223. (Online edition.)
- ^ Note that in the orthography of Early Modern English 'I' was often used in place of 'J', thus the actual quote from Smith(1624) reads, "...we had re-accommodated a Iury-mast to returne for Plimoth..."
- ^ Robert K. Barnhart, ed., Barnhart dictionary of etymology, (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1988), 560.
- ^ E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
- ^ Charles Hamel, "Investigations on the Jury Mast Knot" [1] [2] [3] Accessed 2007-02-22.
- ^ William and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Words and Phrase Origins, 2nd Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 321-322.
- ^ Wilton, Dave. "jerry-built / jury rig". wordorigins.org. wordorigins.org. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
- ^ "Urban Dictionary: MacGyver". Urban Dictionary. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
Further reading [edit]
- John Harland, Seamanship in the Age of Sail (Naval Institute Press, 1984)
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