jerk water

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See also: jerkwater and jerk-water

English

Verb

jerk water (third-person singular simple present jerks water, present participle jerking water, simple past and past participle jerked water)

  1. (US, rail transport, apocryphal) To fill a steam locomotive water tank manually from natural water supplies (a hypothetical process whose use has been discredited).
    • 1954, Mari Sandoz, The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men, page 171:
      The Santa Fe, called the Jerk Water route because they "jerked" water from ponds and wallows for the engine, still frayed out at the Kansas line.
    • 1975 Mar, Indiana Historical Society, Indiana Magazine of History, volume 71, number 1, page 355:
      […] by bailing from near streams with buckets, (the brake-man called this operation jerking water) and from this the road gets its name of jerkwater road.
  2. (US, rail transport, dated) To scoop water from a track pan mounted on the tracks directly into a steam engine's tank without stopping.
    • 1979, The Train Dispatcher - Volumes 61-62, page 49:
      In 1870 at Montrose, N.Y., the New York Central made the first installation of a track pan and scoop to permit locomotives to take water on the fly. Since these installations invariably were in tiny communities, and since they permitted locomotives literally to “jerk water”
    • 2001, Anthony J. Bianculli, Trains and Technology: Track and structures, page 19610:
      The early, crude "jerk water" device applied by the New York Central is shown in figure 8.24.
    • 2016, Kevin EuDaly, Mike Schafer, Steve Jessup, The Complete Book of North American Railroading, page 335:
      Towns with track pans no longer had as many trains stop there, and they became derisively known as “jerkwater” towns, where the trains would jerk water and just keep on going.

Adjective

jerk water (comparative more jerk water, superlative most jerk water)

  1. (US, colloquial, derogatory) Of inhabited places, small, insignificant, isolated, backwards
    • c. 1920, Ring Lardner, The Real Dope
      But any way from the number of jerk water burgs we went through you would think we was on the Monon and the towns all looks so much like the other that .

Derived terms

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