Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site warwick.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!mcvax!ukc!warwick!kay
From: kay@warwick.UUCP (Kay Dekker)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: what's a "pantoffel-computer"
Message-ID: <2407@flame.warwick.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Jan-86 19:15:22 EST
Article-I.D.: flame.2407
Posted: Sat Jan  4 19:15:22 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Jan-86 03:44:17 EST
References: <4300001@konech.UUCP> <483@mot.UUCP>
Reply-To: kay@flame.UUCP (Kay Dekker)
Organization: VLSI Group, Warwick University, UK
Lines: 28
Xpath: warwick flame flame ubu

In article <483@mot.UUCP> al@mot.UUCP (Al Filipski) writes:

>There is a word "jerry-built" which is not too commonly heard any more,
>but is used to describe shoddy, "chewing gun and baling wire" construction.
>I believe the "jerry" is a corruption of latin "dies"="day", hence
>something "jerry-built" (or, a variant "jury-rigged") is something
>whose lifetime is on the order of magnitude of a day.

I believe "jury-rigged" and "jerry-built" have different origins;
"jury" in this context from Old French "ajurie": aid ["aju": pres. stem of
"aidier" + "rie"] ; thus a (temporary) solution.  I'm not so sure about
"jerry" from "dies", though it looks plausible...

I note the phrase "chewing gun [presumably "gum"?] and baling wire".  I was
brought up (Yorkshire, England, 1960s) with the equivalent "string and brown
paper".  My younger sister (born 1966) states that among her friends, the
equivalent is "bog roll and sticky-back plastic" [after a method of
construction popular on a BBC television children's programme "Blue Peter",
which involved the use of (among other things) the cardboard inners of
toilet paper rolls and adhesive plastic film].  But I digress...

						Kay.



-- 
This .signature void where not prohibited by law
						...ukc!warwick!kay