[lit-ideas] Re: Three Footnotes for a Slow Day
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 15:14:40 -0700
On Aug 4, 2008, at 10:46 AM, Julie Krueger wrote:
Isn't jerky called jerky because you pull it apart, "jerk" it
apart, take a "jerk" of it?
You may choose to accept that straightforward explanation if you
wish, but you could also enjoy the OED's verbal picture in which a
word moves, presumably because dried meat was so useful to sailors,
from what later became Peru to w.l.b. Massachusetts, then is misheard
by John Smith and somehow ends up as the term to describe something
completely different from dried meat, the spicy signature rub of
Jamaica that goes *on* meat.
David Ritchie,
the Pemmican Club,
Portland, Oregon
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