Sometimes when a machine breaks, but real replacement parts aren’t available, you have to jury-rig a repair. This has nothing to do with trial juries, rigged or not. Originally this version of “jury” was a term sailors used for any makeshift repair they substituted for the original, usually in an emergency. You know, like when a storm blows your mast down and you have to built a temporary one out of whatever you have on board your ship.
Nobody is quite sure where “jury” came from in this context. There’s a theory that it’s a shortened version of “injury,” but there’s no evidence to advance that any further than the theory stage.
Another term that’s sometimes substituted for “jury-rigged” is “jerryrigged.” This is most likely just a case of having confused one term for another because they sound similar, and, for that matter, have similar meanings. Originally “jerryrigged” was “jerrybuilt,” which originated in the 1800s in England. There were “jerrybuilders” who constructed houses, probably to make a quick profit. They used cheap materials and inferior practices, and a “jerrybuilt” house wasn’t very sturdy.
It’s possible that the “jerry” in “jerrybuilt” is a version of “jury” from “jury-rigged,” but nobody knows about that either. It also might be the case that some guy named Jerry built so many homes — badly — that he became infamous enough for his name to enter the language.
You’ve probably noticed that “jerryrigged” might be, in a sense, a jury-rigged word. In the moment, if you can’t precisely recall a term you want to use, it’s pretty common to seize on the closest match you CAN remember. That happens all the time, and there’s even a word for it (sort of): “mondegreen.”
A mondegreen is a mishearing of a phrase (or song lyrics) leading to a repetition of the approximate phrase, but off by a bit. For example, the phrase “for all intents and purposes” is sometimes misspoken as “for all intensive purposes.” The word “mondegreen” actually comes from such an episode. A writer (Sylvia Wright, in 1954) was listening to a Scottish ballad that included this line:
“They ha’e slain the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green”
She heard it differently, and repeated it this way:
“They ha’e slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen”
A mondegreen is not the same as a “malapropism”, but they have a certain kinship. For one thing, “malapropism” also has an amusing origin. A malapropism is a misuse of a (usually fairly long) word, ostensibly in an attempt to sound more intelligent. The term comes from the character “Mrs. Malaprop” in the 1775 play The Rivals. In almost every line she has, Mrs. Malaprop tries to sound sophisticated and refined, but uses the wrong word. One famous one is that she refers to the “allegories” you might see on the banks of the river Nile. By all reports the play was hilarious, at least at the time.
Mrs. Malaprop’s name is derived from “mal a propos,” which is French for “inappropriate.” You don’t run into the word “malapropism” nearly frequently enough, given the pervasiveness of malapropisms in modern corporate speech and writing. The interesting thing is, nobody really knows whether using longer words convinces anybody that you’re smart or sophisticated. It’s certainly used to great comic effect throughout literature though. But then again, the people writing plays and novels are the same ones who care a great deal about words and language, and it’s just possible that either (1) they themselves are unduly impressed by anyone with a large working vocabulary, or (2) their fondest wish, having cultivated their own command of language for years, is that their language skills will impress people.
We’ve passed the season in the US when Christmas carols are liable to break out at random places and times. Most people aren’t all that familiar with songs you hear just a couple of times per year (or incessantly, if you happen to work in a retail store during yuletide). So the lyrics of carols are common places to find, not malapropisms, but mondegreens. Here’s a couple of well-known examples:
In the song Frosty the Snowman, Frosty is described as having “…a corncob pipe and a button nose…”. Some people seem to think that it really says this instead:
“…a corncob pipe and a butt and a nose...”
And in God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, the first line MIGHT be: “Get dressed ye married gentlemen”. I mean, it’s possible, right? At worst it’s just a jury-rigged lyric.
