jerk

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɜːk/
• (US) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɝk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k

Probably from Middle English yerk (“sudden motion”) and Middle English yerkid (“tightly pulled”), from Old English ġearc (“ready, active, quick”) and Old English ġearcian (“to prepare, make ready, procure, furnish, supply”). Cognate with Scots yerk (“to jerk”). Related also to English yare (“ready”).

• yark

jerk (plural jerks)

1. A sudden, often uncontrolled movement, especially of the body.
   • 1856, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter X, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling

     The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave.

   • 1908, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Bristol: J[ames] W[illiams] Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, →OCLC, page 114:

     A barrel-organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune.

2. A quick tug or shake.

   When I yell "OK," give the mooring line a good jerk!

3. (originally Canada, US, slang, derogatory) A person with unlikable or obnoxious qualities and behavior, typically mean, self-centered, or disagreeable; an arsehole.
   • 1962, George Axelrod, 1:23:39 from the start, in The Manchurian Candidate, spoken by Eleanor Iselin (Angela Lansbury):

     Oh, Raymond―don't be such a jerk. Go and get yourself a drink or a tranquilizer or something.

   I finally fired him, because he was being a real jerk to his customers, even to some of the staff.

   You really are a jerk sometimes.

4. (US, slang, derogatory) A stupid person; an idiot or fool.
5. (weightlifting) A lift in which the weight is taken with a quick motion from shoulder height to a position above the head with arms fully extended and held there for a brief time.
6. (slang) An act of male masturbation.
   1. (Internet slang) An act of satirizing behavior that is, to an extent, common in a community, especially in circlejerk subreddits.

      Jerk of the Year contender

7. (preceded by definite article) A dance, popular in Western culture in the 1960s, in which the head and upper body is thrown forwards regularly to the beat of the music.
   • 1964, “The Jerk”, Don Julian (lyrics), performed by The Larks:

     Girls, hey, what's that you're doing
     Girl, girl, what's that you're doing
     You got to show me the steps to it
     Somehow, gonna learn how to do it
     Doing the jerk
     Hey, do the jerk
     Girl, come on and work
     Hey, do the jerk.

8. (physics, engineering) The rate of change in acceleration with respect to time.
9. (US, obsolete) A soda jerk.

• Jerk is measured in metres per second cubed (m/s³) in SI units, or in feet per second cubed (ft/s³) in imperial units.

• (sudden movement): jolt, lurch, jump
• (quick tug): yank
• (unlikable person): asshole, bastard, twat, knobhead, tosser, wanker, git, dick; see Thesaurus:jerk.
• (stupid person): numbskull
• (physics, change in acceleration): jolt (British), surge, lurch

• (physics): jounce

jerk (third-person singular simple present jerks, present participle jerking, simple past and past participle jerked)

1. (intransitive) To make a sudden uncontrolled movement.
   • [1877], Anna Sewell, “A Strike for Liberty”, in Black Beauty: […], London: Jarrold and Sons, […], →OCLC, part II, page 106:

     York came to me first, whilst the groom stood at Ginger's head. He drew my head back and fixed the rein so tight that it was almost intolerable; then he went to Ginger, who was impatiently jerking her head up and down against the bit, as was her way now.

2. (transitive) To give a quick, often unpleasant tug or shake.
3. (US, slang, vulgar) To masturbate.
   1. (Internet slang) To satirize behavior that is, to an extent, common in a community, especially in circlejerk subreddits.

      This is jerking’s 9/11

4. (obsolete) To beat, to hit.
5. (obsolete) To throw with a quick and suddenly arrested motion of the hand.

   to jerk a stone

6. (usually transitive, weightlifting) To lift using a jerk.
7. (obsolete) To flout with contempt.

• acceleration
• displacement
• velocity
• jounce

From American Spanish charquear, from charqui, from Quechua ch'arki.

jerk (uncountable)

1. (Caribbean, Jamaica) A rich, spicy Jamaican marinade.
   • 2016, Fodor's Essential Caribbean, Fodor's Travel, →ISBN:

     Sunshine ranks high in the island's greates burger debate, while the chicken egg rolls with mango chutney and jerk mayo and fabulous fish tacos elevate pub grub to an art.

2. (Caribbean, Jamaica) Meat (or sometimes vegetables) cured by jerking, in which it is coated in spices and slow-cooked over a fire or grill traditionally composed of green pimento wood positioned over burning coals; charqui.

   Jerk chicken is a local favorite.

• jerky (noun)

jerk (third-person singular simple present jerks, present participle jerking, simple past and past participle jerked)

1. To cure (meat) by cutting it into strips and drying it, originally in the sun.

   Synonym: jerky

   • 1954, Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 37:

     Snow stalled him in the timber; his food was all but gone when he managed to kill an antelope and jerk a supply of venison.

   • 2011, Dominic Smith, Bright and Distant Shores, page 106:

     The Lemakot in the north strangled widows and threw them into the cremation pyres of their dead husbands. If they defeated potential invaders the New Irish hanged the vanquished from banyan trees, flensed their windpipes, removed their heads, left their intestines to jerk in the sun.

   • 2016, Fodor's Travel Guides, Fodor's Essential Caribbean, Fodor's Travel, →ISBN:

     This longtime West End eatery prepares chicken the way locals like it: curried, fried, jerked, and baked.

From English.

• IPA^(key): /dʒɛʁk/

jerk m (plural jerks)

1. jerk (dance)

• “jerk”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• jark, nerk

From Proto-Slavic *jьkrà.

jerk m inan

1. roe

• Muka, Arnošt (1921, 1928) “jerk”, in Słownik dolnoserbskeje rěcy a jeje narěcow (in German), St. Petersburg, Prague: ОРЯС РАН, ČAVU; Reprinted Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag, 2008
• Starosta, Manfred (1999) “jerk”, in Dolnoserbsko-nimski słownik / Niedersorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (in German), Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag

jerk (verbal noun jerkal, past participle jerkit)

1. to expect