jerry-built
jerry-built adjective: built cheaply and shoddily.
Adjective
jerry-built
- Built cheaply and shoddily.
- 1832, Liverpool Mercury, ‘…members of the Bluebell Club, the Jerry-Building society, &c…’ (via https://theprioryandthecastironshore.wordpress.com/2017/07/06/jerry-builder-origin-of-the-term/)
- He had tried other building speculations, had run up other “jerry-built” houses, and had failed utterly, hopelessly.1859, August 6, Albany Fonblanque, Junr., Once a Week, article Sebastopol Villa
jerry-built meaning in Malayalam and Kannada
jerry-built in Malayalam
- badly built, shoddy, gimcrack
- ദുരധിഷ്ഠിത, മോശമായി ഉണ്ടാക്കിയ, കുറഞ്ഞ ചെലവിൽ പ്രാകൃതമായി തല്ലിക്കൂട്ടിയ, ആകർഷകമെങ്കിലും നിസ്സാരമായ, ലോലമായ, നിലനിൽക്കാത്ത
Origin of jerry-built
Unknown; there are many theories. I was led to believe it referred to houses built by German pow’s See jerry (possibly etymologically related).
Words formed from jerry-built
Questions about jerry-built
- What does jerry-built mean?
- Jerry-built means built cheaply and shoddily.
- What is jerry-built in Malayalam?
- Jerry-built in Malayalam is ദുരധിഷ്ഠിത, മോശമായി ഉണ്ടാക്കിയ, കുറഞ്ഞ ചെലവിൽ പ്രാകൃതമായി തല്ലിക്കൂട്ടിയ. See Jerry-built meaning in Malayalam.
- What part of speech is jerry-built?
- Jerry-built is an adjective.
Words near jerry-built in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jerry-built (page history and authors); jerry-built (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); jerry-built (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: “jerry-built.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jerry-built. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.