knee-jerky
knee-jerky adjective: exhibiting or characteristic of a rash or automatic response.
Adjective
knee-jerky (comparative more knee-jerky, superlative most knee-jerky)
- Exhibiting or characteristic of a rash or automatic response.
- Could you please resolve to control your knee-jerky impulse to give every Tom, Dick, and Harry (Kupfer?) a standing ovation?1991, Gordon Rogoff, American Theatre, volume 8, page 224
- Despite possessing a libertarian streak that's widening over time, Buzz doesn't get all knee-jerky in opposing new government regulation, even when politicians start messing with the Internet.2003 May 12, Paul McNamara, “Bet on the Internet winning this one”, in Network World, volume 20, number 19, page 64
- Synonyms:
- knee-jerkish
Synonyms of knee-jerky
Forms of knee-jerky
| comparative | more knee-jerky |
|---|---|
| superlative | most knee-jerky |
Origin of knee-jerky
From knee-jerk + -y.
Questions about knee-jerky
- What does knee-jerky mean?
- Knee-jerky means exhibiting or characteristic of a rash or automatic response.
- What part of speech is knee-jerky?
- Knee-jerky is an adjective.
Words near knee-jerky in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: knee-jerky (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: “knee-jerky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knee-jerky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.