The Perfect Solution to the Perfect Storm

Let me start off by saying I apologize for not posting an entry on Friday as I had promised. Someone cut open the plastic window on the back of my girlfriend's Jeep and stole all of her CDs; she and I spent most of the day jury-rigging her window back into place with every mechanic's panacea: duct tape.

At least the thief didn't make off with the car, though he had tried - the wiring beneath the steering wheel was exposed, and the housing around the steering column lay in the footwell on the passenger side.

Yes, I know it was a he.*


Today's entry features one of the words I just used: jury-rig.

To jury-rig something is to construct a quick, temporary solution to a problem out of necessity. It hearkens back - again - to the navy, where "jury" refers to anything used in place of the real thing in an emergency. It specifically refers to a jury-mast, or a temporary mast built to support the sails when the mainmast has collapsed, like the mainmast at the right.

The use of "jury" in this word is debatable, but the leading attribution is a shortening of the word "injury."

For your education: how to tie a jury-mast knot (or mainmast knot, or pitcher knot, depending on what the knot is holding). Here's a video version if you prefer.

A jury-mast knot.

Sailors tie the jury-mast knot around the jury-mast and use the loops at the side to anchor the mast to stays. Though little evidence exists that such a knot was used in the Age of Exploration, modern sailing texts recommend using this knot for securing the jury-mast.

Also for your education: you cannot jury-rig a courtroom.** You can, however, jurypack a courtroom, which is to stack a jury in such a way as to make a specific outcome likelier.

It is also not "jerry-rig," as some of you might have thought, and as the Brits during the World Wars deliberately used to denigrate the Germans.*** There is a similar-but-not-synonymous word, "jerrybuilt," which refers not to a quick fix but a deliberately shoddy job using slipshod workmanship or second-rate materials to turn a profit. It has its origins in 19th-century England, where it described home builders who followed such a questionable practice.

Curious about synonyms for jury-rig? My favorites include:

• stopgap, which I would have covered if I could actually find any information about its origin;
  
• substitute, though it doesn't mean a jury-rigged teacher;
  
• and finally, MacGyver, the original magician of makeshifts in all of his '80s glory.

I use MacGyver as a verb. I encourage you to do the same.




Information purloined from http://www.word-detective.com/back-g2.html

* - well, her tampons and lotion were still there...

** - unless you convert the loo into a hall of justice

*** - The British called their chamberpots "Jerries" after Jericho, the rough area of Oxford, and the German helmets resembled British chamberpots.****

**** - it's also subtler than "$&!@head"

Welcome, ladies and germs, to my shiny, new blog

For all of the logo- and linguaphiles out there, I plan to regularly update with tidbits about language, idioms, wordplay, puns, etymology and hilarious mistranslations. Once my online class, RTV 3280: Interactive Media, ends, I would like to make my blog more variegated, but for now I will stick to a singular topic. I hope you'll come to like the cut of my blog's jib.

"Cut of your blog's jib?" you might ask. "Why, old boy, that's crazy talk!"And while I would in response ask why you insist on speaking like the Great Gatsby, I suppose I will indulge you just this once.*

The cut of one's jib emerged as a nautical phrase most likely in the Age of Exploration. The jib is any one of various triangular sails that adds additional power to the mainsail. It is at the bow of the ship, connected to the topmast, as in the picture at the left.
Every nation's shipbuilding style resulted in a different sail shape, and a ship's nationality could therefore be determined from the jib.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yacht_jib.svg)

In modern parlance, "I don't like the cut of his jib" is "I don't like the look of him." Though more humorous if so, it need not refer to just the subject's nose. Sir Walter Scott (yay Ivanhoe!) used the phrase idiomatically in his 1824 book St. Ronan's Well, a piece set mostly around a mineral spring. Bravo, Scott, for publishing a book in such an utterly boring setting.

Information purloined from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cut-of-your-jib.html

* - And every time hereafter