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Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 78. The word origin today is" jerk. " Now
remember of course, jerk can have many meanings, but the one we're looking at
the origin of is when jerk means like an annoying person or a stupid person. This
is where ... this is the origin that we're covering today. So let's look at the note
here. If someone calls another person a jerk, it means that person is stupid
annoying or does things that are not kind. Yeah. We especially use it for that
too. Women tend to use this term more often
about men. Yes. Sometimes we call a person a jerk just because they're not smart or
they're an idiot or they do stupid things. But a lot of times it's because
they do unkind things. I think a lot of women sometimes they'll break up with a
guy or the guy did stupid things that women often refer to some men as a jerk.
However, it's not limited to men. Anyone could use it about anyone else. So a
woman could be called a jerk too. But I still think it's a lot more common the
other way around. Jerk as a verb can have the meaning to
make a sudden strong pull like, like something like that. That could be a jerk
that could be a noun as well too but that's not the noun we're covering. But
the meaning of a verb is connected to the word jerk meaning an annoying person.
So that's why it's important we cover that. All right. Let's continue. The origin
meaning a stupid, annoying person goes back to the days of steam engines. At one
time, trains ran on steam, and they ... and they needed a lot of water to be
refilled often. In order to deal with this they had to create a lot of water
stops. The water stops were just like big water towers with long chains hanging
and they needed to be jerked. They needed to be pulled or they need to be jerked
to make the water flow out. Towns started to develop around these towers and they
were referred to as water towns. Okay. People who lived in
these towns were not thought of highly. Maybe they were thought of as stupid or
a low-class or not educated or something like that. And started to be called jerks.
This is what the word jerk actually came from. That was the origin of it. Although,
now we just use it to mean really more of an annoying person or a stupid person
or a person that does kind of mean things and things that's not nice. Okay,
And this would be one typical example of how we use it today. You know, especially
again this is a girl probably angry at some guy or maybe the friends are
talking to the girl. Forget about your ex-boyfriend. He's just
a jerk. You can do much better than him. You know this is a typical way that we
hear the word jerk used today. Okay Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope you
enjoyed it. I hope you thought it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-
bye.
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Basic US

English Tutor Nick P Word Origins ( 78) Jerk (Annoying Person or Idiot )

12 Folder Collection
anitawu12 published on October 13, 2019

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