jury-rig
UK/ˈdʒʊə.ɹi ɹɪɡ//ˈdʒʊɹ.i ɹɪɡ/
jury-rig verb: to build an improvised rigging or assembly from whichever materials are available.
Verb (1)
jury-rig (third-person singular simple present jury-rigs, present participle jury-rigging, simple past and past participle jury-rigged)
- To build an improvised rigging or assembly from whichever materials are available.
- The next day it moderated, and the day after the weather was quite fine, and the sea had gone down. We recovered our spirits, the more so as we heard no more of the cat; and having jury-rigged her aft, we steered our course with a light breeze.1840, [Frederick] Marryat, Poor Jack. […], London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, […], →OCLC
- To create a makeshift, ad hoc solution from resources at hand.
- In fact, he and his friends had kicked the idea around on the "Black Ice" board, much as they had discussed many other nifty notions, such as building personal flame-throwers and jury-rigging fistfulls of blasting-caps.1992, Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown […] , Bantam Books, →ISBN
- Tech behemoths are jury-rigging AI features into their products to avoid being disrupted—but these rollouts, and Apple’s in particular, have been disastrous, giving dangerous health advice, butchering news summaries, and generally crowding and slowing user experiences.2025 May 22, Matteo Wong, “OpenAI’s Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear”, in The Atlantic
- Synonyms:
- jerrybuild, kludge out, MacGyver
Noun
jury-rig (plural jury-rigs)
- An improvised rigging.
- […] the sickly, disheartening feeling which the men of some “overdue” ships that come into harbour at last under a jury-rig must have felt, combated, and overcome in the faithful discharge of their duty.1904–1906, Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published October 1906, →OCLC
Verb (2)
jury-rig (third-person singular simple present jury-rigs, present participle jury-rigging, simple past and past participle jury-rigged)
- To rig a jury; to engage in jury tampering, to improperly influence jurors, or the selection of jurors, such that they deliver a certain verdict.
Synonyms of jury-rig
Forms of jury-rig
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | jury-rigs |
| present participle | jury-rigging |
| past participle | jury-rigged |
| past | jury-rigged |
| alternative form | jury rig |
| alternative form | jerry-rig |
| Noun | |
| plural | jury-rigs |
Origin of jury-rig
From jury (“for temporary use, makeshift”, adjective) + rig. Likely modelled after jurymast. The phrase jury-rigged has been in use since at least 1788. The adjectival use of jury (“makeshift or temporary”), has been said to date from at least 1616, when according to the 1933 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, it appeared in John Smith's A Description of New England. It appeared in Smith's more extensive The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles published in 1624.
See jury, rig.
Words formed from jury-rig
Questions about jury-rig
- What does jury-rig mean?
- Jury-rig means to build an improvised rigging or assembly from whichever materials are available.
- What part of speech is jury-rig?
- Jury-rig can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce jury-rig?
- Jury-rig is pronounced /ˈdʒʊə.ɹi ɹɪɡ/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of jury-rig?
- The past tense of jury-rig is jury-rigged.
Words near jury-rig in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jury-rig (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-jury-rig.ogg, en-au-jury-rig.ogg.
Cite this entry: “jury-rig.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jury-rig. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.