JERRY-BUILT • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Jerry-built

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/dʒˈɛri-bɪlt/ Listen

adjective

Jerry-built adj.

Built hastily and of bad materials; as, jerry-built houses.

Synonyms: slipshod, ramshackle, flimsy.

Developed in an unsystematic or inexpert manner; built haphazardly; used of objects, organizations, plans, etc.

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Etymology of 'Jerry-built'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Jerry-built" Quotes from Famous Books

... exaggeration. Another eager human soul on the threshold longing to find some suitable high work in the world, all unwitting of the fact that ideal strivings are everywhere despised and discouraged—jerry-built cottages for the million being the day's demand and not oratories or palaces of art or ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... trade in fuel. Between the consumer and the collier is a string of private persons each resolved to squeeze every penny of profit out of the coal on its way to the cheap and wasteful grate one finds in the jerry-built homes of the poor. In addition there is every winter now, whether in Great Britain or America, a manipulation of the coal market and a more or less severe coal famine. Coal is jerked up to unprecedented prices, and the small consumer, who ...

— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... patriarchal basis, using their revenues for extensions, and depending on his faithful and well-satisfied stockholders for such further accessions of capital as the business might in his judgment need. About the time General Electric was most anxious to bolster up its jerry-built structure with the solid Westinghouse concern, the latter institution had begun the erection of some big new plants which required immediately several millions additional capital. Westinghouse prepared to apply to his stockholders for the required funds, and the announcement was to ...

— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... an indignant grunt, followed by a flabby groan and a straining and squeaking of the jerry-built staircase as Kasheed Hassoun vigorously applied a lath to the horny backsides of Eset ...

— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... long way; every mile and every gallon of gasoline made Skidder madder; and when at length he arrived at the brand new, jerry-built apartment house inhabited by Max Sondheim, he had concluded that the Red Flag Club was an undesirable tenant and that it must be summarily ...

— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

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