jerry-built
Americanadjective
-
built cheaply and flimsily.
- Synonyms:
- slipshod, shoddy, rickety, ramshackle
-
contrived or developed in a haphazard, unsubstantial fashion, as a project or organization.
Etymology
Origin of jerry-built
1865–70; jerry (as in jerry-build ) + built
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In many areas of the island, people are cooking with jerry-built open wood stoves.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 6, 2026
I pictured Roberts speaking from a wooden study in her home, a jerry-built microphone rigged to an old desk.
From Fox News • Sep. 18, 2019
In fact, at that moment, hundreds of people, detained migrants, were languishing in a jerry-built cage underneath the Paso del Norte International Bridge.
From The New Yorker • May 27, 2019
Meanwhile, the bespoke songs that might have been written — a musical counterpoint to the book's vivid but imaginary 1920s — haunt these jerry-built selections like vengeful unborn ghosts.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 6, 2016
His role would be to transform Lawrence’s ideas and Edlefsen’s jerry-built apparatus into an accelerator that worked.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
