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• jerry
  jerry

  adjective

  of inferior materials or workmanship.
• Jerry
  Jerry

  noun

  a male given name, form of Gerald, Gerard, Jeremiah, and Jerome.

jerry

¹ American  

[jer-ee] / ˈdʒɛr i /

adjective

Building Trades Slang.

1. of inferior materials or workmanship.

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jerry ² American  

[jer-ee] / ˈdʒɛr i /

noun

Chiefly British Slang.

• jerries
  plural

1. a chamber pot.

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Jerry ³ American  

[jer-ee] / ˈdʒɛr i /

noun

1. a male given name, form of Gerald, Gerard, Jeremiah, and Jerome.

2. a female given name, form of Geraldine.

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Jerry ⁴ American  

[jer-ee] / ˈdʒɛr i /

noun

Older Slang: Sometimes Offensive.

• Jerries
  plural

1. a German, especially a German soldier.

2. Germans collectively.

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Jerry ¹ British  

/ ˈdʒɛrɪ /

noun

1. a German, esp a German soldier

2. the Germans collectively

   Jerry didn't send his bombers out last night

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jerry ² British  

/ ˈdʒɛrɪ /

noun

1. an informal word for chamber pot

2. short for jeroboam

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Sensitive Note

Jerry was a nickname used by Allied soldiers for a German soldier during World War I, but it was more commonly used in World War II.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• Jerries
  plural
• jerries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of jerry¹

First recorded in 1875–80; short for jerry-built

Origin of jerry²

1820–30; short for Jeroboam (because if one drank such a large amount of liquid, one would have to void urine during the night)

Origin of Jerry⁴

First recorded in 1910–15; Ger(man) + -y ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

jerry Jerry Jerries

Fellow tourist Vladislav, who arrived by road from the Russian region of Krasnodar, said he had brought jerry cans filled with petrol in case he was unable to find fuel.

From Barron's ● Jul. 31, 2026

People bought five-gallon jerry cans, filled them, and bought more.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026

Left behind on the street outside the Louvre was the truck, a jerry can, a blowtorch, angle grinders, a walkie-talkie and yellow vests.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

"I used to sell up to five jerry cans of shea oil a week, right now I can only fill two jerry cans at most."

From BBC ● May 1, 2025

Hundreds of gallons of water in ten gallon plastic jerry jugs.

From "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

Alice and Jerry, kids just like us, were rivals of a sort to the heroes of the “Dick and Jane” books that many other youngsters once used to parse their first printed words.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

“Look, Jerry, look,” Alice implores as the first story begins.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

Gov. Jerry Brown oversaw massive reductions in California’s prison population in the 2010s.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026

Jerry Sanders-Carr, who runs Exe Valley Lamb, near Exeter, said he had lost 15% of his sheep to the virus.

From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026

A screwdriver turns in screws, and...She wondered, sometimes, if the whole country had fallen into a Jerry Springer episode.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

I’m not in Cisterna because the Jerries still got it, but we were pretty darn close.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2012

Did you hear that German girls threw flowers at the Jerries as they marched into Sibiu and Seghisoara?

From Time Magazine Archive

Now that the Jerries meant business, internal communications broke down: during raids the big red busses pulled to the curb and the high black quacking taxis stopped short and their cabbies ducked.

From Time Magazine Archive

They wanted to know: How many live Jerries are in Crete?

From Time Magazine Archive

O'Malley had gotten into the formation first and he was taking it apart with a display of aerial gymnastics that made the Jerries forget anything but escape.

From A Yankee Flier with the R.A.F. by Rutherford George Montgomery