Jury rig

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Jury rigging refers to makeshift repairs or temporary contrivances, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand. Originally a nautical term, on sailing ships a jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of damage or loss of the original mast.

Etymology

The phrase "jury rigged" has been in use since at least 1788. However, the adjectival use of "jury" in the sense of makeshift or temporary dates from at least 1616, when it appeared in John Smith's A Description of New England. It appeared again, in a similar passage, in Smith's more extensive The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles published in 1624.

There are several theories about the origin of this usage of "jury":

From the Latin adjutare ("to aid") via Old French ajurie ("help or relief").
"Jury-mast" derived from "injury-mast", though The Oxford English Dictionary indicates no evidence has been found to support this theory.
From the French du jour ("of the day"), and thus temporary

Rigging

While ships typically carried a number of spare parts, such as topmasts, the lower masts, at up to one meter in diameter, were too large to carry spares. So a jury mast could be various things. Ships always carried a variety of spare sails, so rigging the jury mast once erected was mostly a matter of selecting appropriate size. Contemporary drawings and paintings show a wide variety of jury rigs, attesting to the creativity of sailors faced with the need to save their ships. Example jury-rig configurations are:

A spare topmast
The main boom of a brig
To replace the foremast with the mizzenmast: mentioned in W. Brady's The Kedge Anchor (1852)
The bowsprit set upright and tied to the stump of the original mast.

The Jury mast knot is often mentioned as a method to provide the anchor points for securing makeshift stays and shrouds to the new mast. However, there is a lack of hard evidence regarding the knot's actual historical use.

Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and get replacement masts.

Similar phrases

The phrase "jerry-built" has a separate origin and implies shoddy workmanship not necessarily of a temporary nature.
The term "jerry-rigged" is a relatively recent mingling (or perhaps garbling) of "jury rig" with "jerry-built".
Several slang terms combine a noun or adjective with the suffix "-rig" to denote an improvised or poor quality repair, often used pejoratively:

*nigger-rig - Based on the racial slur "nigger", this is likely to be interpreted as offensive and vulgar. attested since the mid-1960s, especially in the Southern United States.

*Jimmy-rig

*ghetto-rig

*afro-rig

*Jheri curl-rig

Notes and references

External links

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Last updated on Wednesday February 27, 2008 at 17:05:44 PST (GMT -0800)
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