jerry-build
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of jerry-build
1880–85; back formation from jerry-builder. See jerry 2, build
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.
See Examples For:
The Belgian license plate is too large for the plate holder of the small Italian Fiat 600, and Belgian importers must jerry-build other arrangements.
From Time Magazine Archive
Fortunately, the practical difficulties in acquiring precisely the right materials, not to mention the engineering know-how to jerry-build a nuclear device successfully, make this type of threat highly unlikely.
From Time Magazine Archive
That drive left him with supporters in every state, whom he can begin early to shape into the kind of national organization he had to jerry-build from scratch in 1984.
From Time Magazine Archive
It takes half a year to jerry-build a dingy street, but it takes a decade for newly-planted trees to give the woodland air by imperceptible stages to a stretch of country.
From Post-Prandial Philosophy by Allen, Grant
Aĉa = nasty; domaĉo = a hovel; veteraĉo = vile weather; ĉapelaĉo = a shabby hat; fuŝkonstrui, or, konstruaĉi = to jerry-build.
From The International Auxiliary Language Esperanto Grammar and Commentary by Cox, George
Clergymen rightly fear that this spiritual construction is sometimes no better than jerry-building.
From Time Magazine Archive
To plug the gaping hole in its summer schedule, NBC is jerry-building a schedule of reruns, specials and movies.
From Time Magazine Archive
Instead of jerry-building new security barricades, reasoned some Monday-morning missilemen, the Pentagon should try to see that the public is not again gulled by over-optimistic news stories.
From Time Magazine Archive
Packing-crate partitions often reveal more than reading habits, and in many a new jerry-building, whole floors of amateur Chapman reporters dread facing one another in the elevators in the morning.
From Time Magazine Archive
“So there was jerry-building in those days too!” someone exclaims, with a note of triumph at the dragging down of the great ideals of the past to the level of the paltriness of the present.
From Ecclesiastical Curiosities by Various
In many areas of the island, people are cooking with jerry-built open wood stoves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026
I pictured Roberts speaking from a wooden study in her home, a jerry-built microphone rigged to an old desk.
From Fox News ● Sep. 18, 2019
In fact, at that moment, hundreds of people, detained migrants, were languishing in a jerry-built cage underneath the Paso del Norte International Bridge.
From The New Yorker ● May 27, 2019
After dropping out, Haack pursued his interest in jerry-built instruments like the touch-sensitive Dermatron and Peopleodeon — the latter was even featured on the Steve Allen show “I’ve Got a Secret” in 1966.
From New York Times ● Jan. 9, 2018
His role would be to transform Lawrence’s ideas and Edlefsen’s jerry-built apparatus into an accelerator that worked.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
