Word.ws English Dictionary

jerkwater

US/ˈd͡ʒɚk.wɔ.tɚ/

jerkwater noun: a train on a branch line.

Noun

jerkwater (plural jerkwaters)

  1. (US, historical) A train on a branch line.
    • […] by bailing from near streams with buckets, (the brake-man called this operation jerking water) and from this the road gets its name of jerkwater road.1975 Mar, Indiana Historical Society, Indiana Magazine of History, volume 71, number 1, page 355
  2. A jerkwater town.
    • Twenty-five miles down the narrow arid highway, there is another town like Napoleon, a little smaller. And then twenty-five miles further, another. This chain of jerkwaters stretches for a lazy afternoon, until you finally encounter a cluster of people that almost resembles a modern civilization...2016 April 19, Rex Sorgatz, “The Internet Really Has Changed Everything. Here’s the Proof.”, in Wired

Adjective

jerkwater (comparative more jerkwater, superlative most jerkwater)

  1. (US, colloquial, derogatory) Of an inhabited place, small, insignificant, and backward.

Forms of jerkwater

Noun
pluraljerkwaters
Adjective
comparativemore jerkwater
superlativemost jerkwater

Origin of jerkwater

From jerk (“to move with a sudden movement”) + water. Refers to the need to supply the boilers of steam trains with water. In rural areas and small towns with no water tower, where the train did not stop, this was done by scooping ("jerking") water from a track pan. First appears c. 1852, in the Miami County Sentinel (Peru, Indiana).

Words formed from jerkwater

Phrases with jerkwater

Questions about jerkwater

What does jerkwater mean?
Jerkwater means a train on a branch line.
What part of speech is jerkwater?
Jerkwater can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce jerkwater?
Jerkwater is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɚk.wɔ.tɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of jerkwater?
The plural of jerkwater is jerkwaters.

Words near jerkwater in the dictionary

  1. jerks up
  2. jerksome
  3. jerkum
  4. jerkwad
  5. jerkwads
  6. jerkwater
  7. jerkwater town
  8. jerkwater towns
  9. jerkwaters
  10. jerkweed
  11. jerkweeds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jerkwater (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-jerkwater.ogg.

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