jackleg

[ jak-leg ]

adjective

1. unskilled or untrained for one's work; amateur:

   a jackleg electrician.

2. unscrupulous or without the accepted standards of one's profession:

   a jackleg lawyer.

3. makeshift; temporary.

noun

1. an unskilled or unscrupulous itinerant worker or practitioner.

Word History and Origins

Origin of jackleg¹

1840–50, Americanism; perhaps jack ¹ + (black)leg

Example Sentences

They are developing local tourism, every March hosting a popular Apache Leap Mining Festival that includes a parade, chihuahua races and a mining competition with hand-sawing and jackleg drilling contests.

From Seattle Times

Does it even need to be said that Trump issued statements on that jackleg social media site of his claiming none of it happened, saying that he hardly knows who Hutchinson is, dubbing her a “whacko”?

From Seattle Times

"So, his own staff rolled him and allowed external pressures to hurt him - and then let him come out with this sort of jackleg stumbling into making this reversal of a position that he's held for 40 years," Stirewalt added.

From Fox News

The rollout of the Democrat's new position was "terrible staff work" and looked like "jackleg stumbling," Stirewalt said during an appearance Friday on "The Daily Briefing."

From Fox News

Phillips was known as a jackleg preacher, meaning he wasn’t formally ordained by any religious organization, but he made regular appearances in the pulpit of the Pleasant Hill Trinity Baptist Church, just down the road from the eighty-seven-acre farm where he grew up.

From The New Yorker