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The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
- tokyolights2 1y agoI wonder how much of it is that in today's society it is worse to be disagreeable than it is to be inept.
- aspenmayer 1y agoThat is a great phrasing of the feeling I was trying to get at when I originally read this, and the kind of discussion I hoped I would find by posting it here. Thanks for finding the words.
- aspenmayer 1y agohttps://archive.is/JTdcI https://archive.is/JTdcI
- nosioptar 1y agoI prefer the term "douchebag" for its inclusivity. People of all ages know you're calling the person an asshole. I've also noticed Mormons are less offended by "douchebag" than "asshole".
- tunesmith 1y agoToo bad it's misogynistic. I'm not sure you already knew that. If I were rude enough to call you a name, I wonder what term I could use that would work either way!
- bezier-curve 1y agoAs a gay man, I disagree. I think it's a word that describes someone who doesn't consider others without realizing it.
- gausswho 1y agoYou could try scumbag, but you might not want to know what it originally meant.
- andy99 1y agoI always thought it was the third derivative of position
- pinoy420 1y agoNo you didn’t. Hacker news moment.
- jowea 1y agoI sincerely was wondering whether it was about the person descriptor or the physics term.
- Ygg2 1y agoOh, snap! And crackle and pop.
- cloudfudge 1y agoThis is what I thought the article was going to be about.
- Stratoscope 1y agoI like to use the example of being a passenger in a car. • Position is where you are at any moment. If you're not moving, your position doesn't change. • Velocity is how quickly your position changes. If you are doing 30 MPH on a perfectly straight road with no stops and starts, you may not even notice you're moving until you look out the window. • Acceleration is how quickly your velocity changes. It's the force that makes you feel like you are being pushed back into your seat, for example when your velocity increases from 30 MPH to 60 MPH. • Jerk is how quickly the acceleration changes. It's the force that makes your head snap back against the headrest. A good driver will change acceleration slowly to reduce this effect. If there is too much jerk, it may mean that your driver is being a jerk.
- scyzoryk_xyz 1y agoBoth of these took some time to get there for me but maybe that's because I'm a jerk
- bigstrat2003 1y agoI don't know why, but I went into this thinking it was going to be about soda jerks.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoHad to go to the comments in the linked post to find the reference to the soda jerk. And "jerking" was apparently pulling on the (seltzer) tap. I suppose if "soda jerk" was thought to be a menial job (reminded of one of the threads in the film, "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)) ... then the original meaning of "jerk" as a loser might have come from that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- simondotau 1y agoI went into this thinking it was going to be about culinary spices. But I had just finished watching a video on jerk chicken so my mind was already in the wrong place…
- seeknotfind 1y agoIf you've seen Steve Martin's The Jerk, you'd know he becomes a real jerk in the modern sense during the movie.
- pinoy420 1y ago[dead]
- derbOac 1y agoI'm too young to be a benchmark but I remember the former meaning having a connotation of being annoying to or causing problems for others, but inadvertently so. As in, you're a dimwit who means no harm, but does so because you're a dimwit. But maybe by that time the transformation was already underway.
- jedberg 1y agoWhen I hear jerk my first thought is always as the second derivative of velocity, because I had a TA in college who was specifically studying jerk as it relates to autonomous driving -- back in the 90s! So he taught us how to calculate it and its importance, because it turns out the car can handle a lot more jerk than the humans inside!
- jvm___ 1y agoApparently the trick for roller coasters is to keep the passengers hearts in the same plane so they don't perceive the ride as jerky.
- aidenn0 1y agoUnless you are in Poland; then you need to keep the Poles in the right-hand plane or it will be unstable.
- mangamadaiyan 1y agoI thought the Poles needed to be either all on the left-hand plane, or within the unit disk, for stability? (I haven't had my coffee yet, so maybe I'm remembering wrong). Either way, I loved the joke. Thank you!
- aidenn0 1y agoYou are right, I wrote that before having my coffee...
- handsclean 1y agoI wonder if it used to be that people largely weren’t on the same page, and didn’t know it. It’s not like people consult dictionaries to learn what slang means, or even usually ask somebody, and the definitions are related enough that responses usually don’t distinguish them. I’ve noticed it’s not uncommon online that a post’s likes are split between opposing interpretations, like agreeing with its politics vs seeing it as satire of politics one disagrees with.
- naniwaduni 1y agoPeople still aren't on the same page and don't know it.
- doormatt 1y agoHell, most people are in a different book.
- permo-w 1y agothe British slang version of the word "cheers" is a very good example of this. I can tell you for absolute certain that the most people use the word "cheers" to mean "thanks", but if you go online and look up the definition, you will be told it also means goodbye, which it really doesn't, but I think this arises from the fact that it's a bit more relaxed form of thanks, so people frequently say it as thank you at the end of an interaction where directly thanking the person might sound a bit awkward or overly formal. people hearing the word in that case may understandably assume it means goodbye. as you say, "jerk" is probably similar, except taken far enough that the original meaning is lost. there are many many occasions where using an insult to mean "idiot" could extremely easily be misinterpreted to mean "asshole"
- renewiltord 1y agoFucking hell, there's no way. The goodbye notion sounded outlandish to me, but could it be the same as OP? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/17tzcl5/comment/k915748/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/17tzcl5/comment/k915... says > I certainly use it as a goodbye - typically after meeting someone in the street and stopping to chat, but also generally. Also as an informal signoff for email and saying goodbye over telephone. > > 64M British, brought up in London. Now, I'm having second thoughts. Would I say it to a baker after buying a pastry? Yes. If I ran into a friend while out on a trip would I say it? No, I don't think so, but do I? Maybe as in "good seeing you"? How confusing.
- mc32 1y agoA possible reason people forget the previous meaning despite having used it with the old meaning is that they may have understood and used the new meaning for ages but used the old meaning in more formal settings.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoMakes you wonder what other words have changed meaning right under your nose, without you noticing.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoIt's a good time as any to remind everyone that The Jerk is still one of the funniest movies ever made. It could never be made today, and I suggest you pick up a copy if you've never seen it.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoWhy not? I haven't seen it since the 70s, although that should be warning enough. I do remember "a rags-to riches-to rags story" tagline however.
- variaga 1y ago>> It could never be made today. > Why not? M. Emmett Walsh, Carl Reiner, Maurice Evans and Jackie Mason are all dead, for one reason.
- shawn_w 1y agoNot that big an issue in this age of AI generated deepfake videos.
- aspenmayer 1y agoSpeaking of warnings, this one is all caps. They must mean business! > The Jerk (1979) "For Theater Owners Only" Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZMbj8dt1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZMbj8dt1o It’s hard to be this bad intentionally, and it somehow wraps around to being good again, and that’s knowing it’s an ad and the premise is suspect. Steve Martin is that good. It raises an interesting point that I’ll put to the projectionists of HN: Were there really trailers intended for the theater owners only? It seems absurd on its face, but I’m willing to believe that it’s been tried before, and definitely has since. I mean, ad targeting already exists, but it was probably a bit harder to do back in the day. That’s enough for this content hole.
- keane 1y agoThis one for Ghostbusters was screened at ShoWest 1984 (the National Association of Theatre Owners convention now called CinemaCon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpumEZmxa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpumEZmxa0
- jp57 1y agoHere’s the sort of spooky thing. It’s not just that there are multiple generations who’ve never known a “jerk” was once a simpleton or sap. It’s that some of the folks who used to use it that way don’t remember that they did. When I asked my mom to define the word this week, she used the modern meaning, with no apparent recollection of her former firm conviction that a jerk was a dope, dodo, or dimwit. I am gen-X and I have no recollection of that former meaning at all. I was 10 or 11 years old when the movie The Jerk came out, and I recall being mildly confused about the fact that he didn't really seem like a jerk, and sort of thinking that he must be acting that way on purpose.
- rufus_foreman 1y agoI have the same memory but no idea if that is a real memory or a false one. Being Gen X, most of my meaning for the word jerk came from Devo and the Circle Jerks.
- Tagbert 1y agoI was an adult in my twenties when that movie came out and thought the title was odd as it didn’t seem to fit him. Maybe I had already transitioned from idiot to mild asshole.
- jbaber 1y agoI'm around that age and still have "some poor jerk" in my vocabulary. Any other use than that specific one still has the modern meaning for me.
- sdrothrock 1y agoThe evolution of "jerk" makes me also think of "nimrod" and how it referred to the biblical hunter and meant someone with great skills in hunting, until it was used to refer to Elmer Fudd, at which point the meaning changed to mean a complete idiot. https://thehabit.co/nimrod-hectoring-maudlin-eponymns-and-pejoration/ https://thehabit.co/nimrod-hectoring-maudlin-eponymns-and-pe...
- gerdesj 1y agoNimrod is a piece of music and an aircraft ... in my head, well before anything to do with a comic character.
- quesera 1y agoI thought "nimrod" as an epithet (meaning ~"dummy") came from Nimrod, the Biblical king who ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel (which caused offense to God and thereafter great confusion -- which would have earned him the reputation of being a person who makes bad choices, if your belief system is so aligned).
- VonGuard 1y agoAssyrian in origin, Nimrud was a very talented hunter, but perhaps he got mixed up with a city along the way, and the Bible's thoughts on Assyrians, Persians, and Babylonians is always interesting to trace back to the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borsippa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borsippa Either way, Bugs Bunny used it sarcastically to describe Elmer Fudd, and here we are.
- giraffe_lady 1y agoI believe I have heard it used that way in something pre-20th century as well but I can't figure out where right now. But making poor decisions and offending god is not particularly noteworthy for a figure in genesis. Possibly the most interesting thing about genesis as a piece of literature is that making horrible god-offending choices is quite routine and the figures are not understood as less important because of it, nor more important in spite of it, but simply important for unrelated reasons that cannot be changed by the quality of their judgement or morality of their actions.
- tombert 1y agoInteresting. I'm thirty-something and I do seem to remember my grandparents using "jerk" to mean "idiot", but for my entire life I've always thought of it as a kid-friendly way to say "asshole". It always confused me when my grandparents would call someone who was perfectly nice a "jerk", and it wasn't until I watched the Steve Martin movie four or five years ago that I understood why.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoI've only really heard women use the term jerk, ascribed to a man. I always found it notable because it seemed to be ascribed to behavior of that special and peculiar class where The behavior benefits the man over the concerns of the woman, with an undercurrent that the women will tolerate it because the man is of a high reproductive value. Often to me the behavior rises to what I would think would be despicable, that is something that should result in social rejection. I'm hoping to not unleash an incel argument here.
- tombert 1y agoMaybe a cultural/regional thing. In my experience the term "jerk" has always been pretty unisex and used more or less evenly across genders. For example, here's a famous clip from Norm MacDonald. https://youtu.be/JBrVPv-wiww https://youtu.be/JBrVPv-wiww
- sexyman48 1y agoJust use the full term "jerk-off," and there'll be no ambiguity. Incidentally, nice guys masturbate too, so the term never made sense to me.
- permo-w 1y agoThe meaning changing without noticing thing is interesting but not hugely surprising to me. Besides a few cartoons on TV and maybe some films, in my early life I exclusively spoke and heard British English, but with the proliferation of American English via the internet, there are a lot of words that I know full well I originally pronounced in "British", but now I'm not really sure which is the "correct" pronunciation. "Lever" and "Leverage" are good examples of words where I noticed this and had to figure out which was which. Obviously there's a difference between pronunciation and meaning, and of course I'm aware of the shift, but it feels like a similar thing.
- phkahler 1y agoSo the movie quote says the character was a pumpkin, but definitely not a jerk. Isn't that movie from the late 70s? So the shift took place by then. Or did the movie somehow redefine it?
- aidenn0 1y agoThe article that TFA quotes has a much more thorough description: In 1979, kids may have been using it to mean "asshole" but the writers were in their 30s and definitely meant it to mean "idiot" By the end of the '80s, the "idiot" usage seems to be completely gone.
- kristofferR 1y agoJamaican jerk is really nice.
- VonGuard 1y agoI believe this comes from soda jerks: the guys who jerk the soda taps and make you an egg cream or a chocolate coke. I should probably say "made," as it's a job that was eliminated by soda machines. A lot of restaurants even have customers "Jerk" their own soda, though now you just press a cup against a thingie.
- jbaber 1y agoI thought it was from residents of jerkwater towns.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoThe term "racist" used to mean someone who believed that one's race, or ethnic background was superior to another's. It was a form of belief in racial supremacy. It didn't mean that someone used race as a form of prejudice. But for decades this hasn't been the case, and it is almost exclusively used to describe someone who uses prejudice or discriminates others on the basis of race or ethnicity. And now we no longer have a colloquial or formal single word for someone who holds racial supremacist views, because the two ideas have commingled.
- gitremote 1y agoFor the vast majority of the situations in a English-speaking society, the term for that type of person is a "white supremacist". For example, a person who does Nazi salutes, or wants to update refugee policy so that the majority of immigrants are White South Africans, is a white supremacist.
- andrewmcwatters 1y agoNo, that just describes white supremacists, and ignores Black supremacists, East Asian supremacists, Hispanista supremacists etc.
- knome 1y agoIt is hardly surprising that people don't bother differentiating between those that think they are inherently superior by dint of their race versus those that think others are innately inferior by dint of their race. The one implies the other. And those who would impose such views when met with counterexamples, with condescension, mockery, shunning, exclusion, and violence, are never so far behind.
- perilunar 1y agoMaybe I'm misremembering, but people used to use "racist" (and "sexist") as adjectives, not nouns. You'd say "Joe is racist", not "Joe is a racist". The latter seems more common now, particularly in American English, but just sounds wrong to me.
- 1y ago
- humblepie 1y agoReminds me of Albert Fish.
- quickthrowman 1y agoThe more I learn about that guy, the less I care for him.
- dkarl 1y agoI remember being confused by this word when I was a kid! I was a kid in the eighties and remember reading/hearing things like "what a jerk" and thinking people were way too harsh with it. Maybe I landed too late to learn the old meaning but early enough to hear it sometimes? Or maybe I did learn it early on and then forgot with everybody else.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- CraigJPerry 1y agoOn a tangent from the article since this isn't a forgotten meaning of jerk but i've always been surprised at how often the 3rd derivative of position crops up usefully in life. Just as interesting to me is the fact I've never (i don't think) had a practical use for the 4th derivative, jounce (think this is a British English term, American is snap i believe). The only place i've seen it used is in car suspension design.
- sokoloff 1y agoIn American Mech E, the 4th through 6th derivatives of position are snap, crackle, and pop. Since graduating over 30 years ago, I’ve only ever used or cited crackle and pop on internet message boards or as trivia, never in actual engineering.
- throwup238 1y agoIME crackle and pop are used in space raft design to minimize structural stresses and fuel consumption during orbital maneuvers, precision CNC manufacturing to reduce vibration and improve tolerances, robots like pick and places to minimize wear and tear, semiconductor fabs for their precision positioning systems, and cam design for engines.
- tjmc 1y agoI suspect this unawareness of language use is universal. When I lived in the UK in the early 90's, people would discuss the weather in celcius when it was cold and fahrenheit when it was warm with seemingly no idea that they'd switched.
- LaundroMat 1y agoWhere was the cutoff point?
- carlosjobim 1y agoThe correct answer is at the bottom of this thread. Down voted, [flagged] and [dead] as usual. "Jerk" is sexual slang.
- knome 1y agoYes, it's one of the contenders for the etymology of the insult. To be crude but accurate, we're looking at semantic drift from a jerk being a jerk off to a jerk ass.
- socalgal2 1y agothe post is gaslighting his own mom > It’s that some of the folks who used to use it that way don’t remember that they did. When I asked my mom to define the word this week, she used the modern meaning, with no apparent recollection of her former firm conviction that a jerk was a dope, dodo, or dimwit. Did someone Neuralyze my mom, No, they didn't. It's well documented the meaning was already changing in the 70s. "The Jerk" the movie might make it seem ambiguous but usage meaning "obnoxious/asshole" was common in the 70s and 80s. Dictionary defintions just mean they were out of date to common usage. It doesn't help that you can warp the "idiot" meaning into the "obnoxious" meaning in the form of "If you'd stop being stupid you'd realize your being obnoxious". > In fact, “the 1970s is when you start to see the obnoxious meaning really take off,” says Michael Adams, an English professor and specialist in lexicography at Indiana University Bloomington and the author of Slang: The People’s Poetry and other books about language. Not only was there “a rising use of ‘jerk,’” but there was also “the absolutely predictable development” of “compound forms like jerk ass, jerk face, jerk wad, jerk weed. … That is another reflection of the obnoxious meaning, and basically a generation of heavy slang users looking for a way not to sound like they come from the 1930s by using jerk in the traditional way of their parents and grandparents.” Martin, Adams notes, was in his mid-30s when The Jerk came out, old enough that in contrast to the kids on the cutting edge of jerk usage, he would have been “referring to an older use of the word.”
- n4r9 1y agoBit of an stingy take. His mum may have been born in the 50s, and could reasonably be expected to have known the term prior to its change in usage.
- lmm 1y agoEspecially if you're a monoglot, language seems transparent. You don't remember what you said, you remember what you thought, but you think there's no difference between them, so of course you think you said what you would say now if you thought that. (Indeed many monoglots think they think in language!)
- BobbyTables2 1y agoThought it also referred to change in acceleration in Physics. But never understood the relevance of such a type of unit. Could be fun to talk about the “instantaneous jerk”, “integrating the jerk”, and the “average jerk”.
- saghm 1y agoThere are a few places in the article that they refer to the modern usage as being similar to "asshole", which was interesting to me because I've often been mystified about that word and it's relationship to "ass". When used alone, "ass" to me feels like it's roughly synonymous as when it's prefixed with "dumb", which would seem to relate to that old meaning of "jerk", but with "hole" on the end, it's equivalent to the modern version of "jerk". Putting aside my usual questions about what makes the hole smarter but more rude, maybe "jerk" just gained an implicit hole? And can this tell us anything about whether "jerkwad" will evolve beyond jerk in a generation or two?
- CRConrad 1y ago> When used alone, "ass" to me feels like it's roughly synonymous as when it's prefixed with "dumb", which would seem to relate to that old meaning of "jerk", but with "hole" on the end, it's equivalent to the modern version of "jerk". Could be because the original "ass = stupid" is possibly related not to ass = arse, but to ass = donkey? "Donkey-hole", OTOH, is meaningless, so "asshole" rather definitely means "arsehole".
- nashashmi 1y agoOther words with meanings that changed are punk, dumb, and nice. The dictionary meaning didn’t match how people understood them.
- roryirvine 1y agoSome of those have gone through multiple transitions, of course. Punk: prostitute / catamite -> worthless / degenerate -> confrontational / obnoxious Nice: silly / foolish -> fussy / fastidious -> pleasant / good And "nice" is often used sarcastically, so you could see how the common meaning might in future go full circle.
- skeezyboy 1y agojerk is an insult and always has been, nothing has changed. it was derisive then, and still is
- DonHopkins 1y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41478088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41478088 DonHopkins 11 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The PERQ Computer The predecessor to the "Blit" at Bell Labs was originally named the "Jerq" as a rude play on "Perq" borrowed by permission from Lucasfilm, and the slogan was "A Jerq at Every Desk". PERQ workstation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ Blit (computer terminal): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blit_(computer_terminal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blit_(computer_terminal) >The folk etymology for the Blit name is that it stands for Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal, and its creators have also joked that it actually stood for Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato. However, Rob Pike's paper on the Blit explains that it was named after the second syllable of bit blit, a common name for the bit-block transfer operation that is fundamental to the terminal's graphics.[2] Its original nickname was Jerq, inspired by a joke used during a demo of a Three Rivers' PERQ graphic workstation and used with permission. https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgz37wwYfmHJ_7kZx_T=-zwNJ50PhS7r0kCpuf_F1mDkww@mail.gmail.com/ https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgz37wwYfmHJ_7kZx_T=-zwNJ50... From: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> To: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Blit source Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2019 11:26:47 +1100 [thread overview] Message-ID: <CAKzdPgz37wwYfmHJ_7kZx_T=-zwNJ50PhS7r0kCpuf_F1mDkww@mail.gmail.com> (raw) In-Reply-To: <1576714621.27293.for-standards-violators@oclsc.org> [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 890 bytes --] Your naming isn't right, although the story otherwise is accurate. The Jerq was the original name for the 68K machines hand-made by Bart. The name, originally coined for a fun demo of the Three Rivers Perq by folks at Lucasfilm, was borrowed with permission by us but was considered unsuitable by Sam Morgan as we reached out to make some industrially, by a company (something Atlantic) on Long Island. So "Blit" was coined. The Blit name later stuck unofficially to the DMD-5620, which was made by Teletype and, after some upheavals, had a Western Electric BellMac 32000 CPU. If 5620s were called Jerqs, it was an accident. All the software with that name would be for the original, Locanthi-built and -designed 68K machines. The sequence is thus Jerq, Blit, DMD-5620. DMD stood for dot-mapped rather than bit-mapped, but I never understood why. It seemed a category error to me. -rob https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgxreqfTy+55qc3-Yx5zZPVVwOWoeMLCVFMaKoe0JOO3kw@mail.gmail.com/ https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgxreqfTy+55qc3-Yx5zZPVVwOW... The original name was Jerq, which was first the name given by friends at Lucasfilm to the Three Rivers PERQ workstations they had, for which the Pascal-written software and operating system were unsatisfactory. Bart Locanthi and I (with Greg Chesson and Dave Ditzel?) visited Lucasfilm in 1981 and we saw all the potential there with none of the realization. My personal aha was that, as on the Alto, only one thing could be running at a time and that was a profound limitation. When we began to design our answer to these problems a few weeks later, we called Lucasfilm to ask if they minded us borrowing their excellent rude name, and they readily agreed. Our slogan: A jerq at every desk.
- kpgraham 1y agoAnyone who drives faster than you is a jerk. Anyone who drives slower is an idiot.
- HelloNurse 1y agoThis pattern looks like the semantic "missing link" between the two meanings of jerk: the fast driver is as stupid as the slow one, but in an especially annoying/harmful way. After this specialization, from general stupidity to obnoxious and irritating stupidity, it is a small shift to pure obnoxiousness, implying moral but not intellectual inferiority. But why, of many suitable words, "jerk" was the one who made this transition? Who is responsible?
- wduquette 1y agoI was born in the early 60’s, and I don’t recall my elders ever using “jerk” in what the OP calls the original sense. I have always understood it in the “modern” sense.
- CRConrad 1y ago> I have always understood it in the “modern” sense. IF, that is, your memory is better than Dave Berry's...