jackleg
Americanadjective
-
unskilled or untrained for one's work; amateur.
a jackleg electrician.
-
unscrupulous or without the accepted standards of one's profession.
a jackleg lawyer.
-
makeshift; temporary.
noun
Etymology
Origin of jackleg
1840–50, perhaps jack 1 + (black)leg
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They are developing local tourism, every March hosting a popular Apache Leap Mining Festival that includes a parade, chihuahua races and a mining competition with hand-sawing and jackleg drilling contests.
From Seattle Times • Jun. 29, 2023
There’s the jackleg, where competitors use a six-foot-long hydraulic drill bit to see who can bore the deepest.
From New York Times • Mar. 21, 2011
Jackson has always combined the moral clarity of a prophet with the grubby opportunism of a jackleg preacher.
From Time Magazine Archive
Her hero, John Jackson Cozad. was indeed a wily gentleman jackleg, but a green baize tabletop never confined his instinct for conquest.
From Time Magazine Archive
He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist works; won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him how the jackleg does it?
From The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Twain, Mark
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
