Word.ws English Dictionary

jacklegged

jacklegged is the alternative form of jackleg.

Meaning of jackleg

Adjective

jackleg (not comparable)

  1. (US) Amateur, untrained; incompetent.
    • The next year I had a projecting kind of jack leg carpenter, from Hanover, living with me in the capacity of overseer […]1841, Letter to the editor, The Southern Planter, Volume I, No. 1, January 1841, p. 12
  2. (US) Dishonest, unscrupulous.
    • The little nosy reporter with the hair was fair crazy to come, but McGinty gets a jackleg doctor to examine him an’ swear that he’s sufferin’ from spatulation o’ the medulla oblongata, housemaid’s knee, and the hives.1911, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 14, in Captain Scraggs or The Green-Pea Pirates, New York: Grosset & Dunlap
  3. (US) Ineptly built or operated; makeshift.
    • The train is late […]. ¶ “Well, if I come to such a place as this I must expect a jackleg railroad […].”1889, John McGovern, chapter 12, in David Lockwin: The People’s Idol, Chicago: Donohue

See all 6 meanings of jackleg

Origin of jacklegged

Probably a hypercorrect form.

Questions about jacklegged

What is jacklegged the alternative form of?
Jacklegged is the alternative form of jackleg.

Words near jacklegged in the dictionary

  1. jackknifing
  2. jackknives
  3. jackleg
  4. jackleg fence
  5. jackleg fences
  6. jacklegged
  7. jacklegs
  8. Jackler
  9. jackless
  10. jacklight
  11. jacklighted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jacklegged (page history and authors); jackleg (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “jacklegged.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jacklegged. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.