Jerkwater

[John Ashworth]

Anybody out there know the meaning and derivation of "jerkwater"?

If there's no reply in a few days, FOTR's resident wordsmith Tom M will supply the answer.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Small. Insignificant. Of little consequence.

What is the prize?

[John Ashworth]

Meaning - not bad.

But derivation? Where did this word come from?

Prize? To be known as the most literate bloke on the FOTR forum?

[John Ashworth]

Ah well, nobody has picked up on this for a couple of months, so here's the answer, courtesy of FOTR member Tom Macrery who first drew it to my attention back in October. Tom got it from Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day.

The Word of the Day for October 24 is:

jerkwater \JERK-waw-ter\ adjective
*1 : remote and unimportant
2 : trivial

Example sentence:
"We're stranded in some jerkwater town in the middle of nowhere," said Larry when he called to tell us that the car's engine had blown.

Did you know?
We owe the colorful Americanism “jerkwater” to the invention of the steam engine -- an advancement that significantly accelerated travel by rail but also had its drawbacks. One drawback was that the boilers of the early locomotives needed to be refilled with water frequently, and water tanks were few and far between. As a result, the small trains that ran on rural branch lines often had to stop to take on water from local supplies. Such trains were commonly called “jerkwaters” from the motion of jerking the water up in buckets from the supply to the engine. The derogatory use of “jerkwater” for things unimportant or trivial reflects the fact that these jerkwater trains typically ran on lines connecting small middle-of-nowhere towns.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

And has this got anything to do perhaps with "jerk"?