The 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.
It's fascinating that this pattern happened the reverse direction, with a different biblical term: the word 'fool' as used in the KJV Bible translates a Jewish concept that doesn't really mean what we think of today "a person without intellectual wisdom", but at the time of writing meant more closely "a person without moral wisdom" - or perhaps without both but apparently primarily referring to the moral flaw.
I have also seen the argument that our contemporary distinction between moral and intellectual wisdom itself is something we as readers unconsciously impose on the text, with the distinction not prominently drawn in the ancient Jewish view(s).*
This means that "Fool" moved from a meaning close to "an objectionable or obnoxious person" toward "a person without intellectual wisdom" over centuries, while "jerk" apparently has gone the opposite direction within just a few recent decades.
I 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).
Assyrian 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.
I 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.
For anyone that knew the reference, it was ironic. Needless to say, most of the viewers of that cartoon did not. There were more of the later than former, thus..
I 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.
The article specifically addresses this with the fascinating quote from Dave Berry where he reports that the definition of the word unknowingly changed in his head over the last few decades:
> “I always thought jerk meant asshole. At least I thought I always thought that, although the quotes you cite seem to suggest otherwise. So to answer your question: I have no idea. You may be right!”
I think the two concepts just aren’t that far apart in American English, and words can drift back and forth. Think about insulting the driver in the next car — it’s not always clear if you’re talking about their intelligence or lack of empathy and someone listening might get the opposite impression.
Clown can mean jerk in either sense. “Who’s this idiot?” means something closer to asshole. In old movies you’ll hear someone called “a selfish fool” or “inconsiderate fool,” where fool means something closer to asshole than fool as we usually use it.
Maybe the underlying issue is that it’s hard to tell someone acting obnoxiously because they don’t know better from someone deliberately indifferent or malicious, and the consequences are often the same.
the 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"
>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.
Possibly also because of the phonetic similarity with "ciao"?
Or "tschüß". I have a friend who speaks German and frequently says goodbye with "tschüß", and one time I heard it, thought he said "cheers" (as I often do), and then realise what he'd said—and that the two sound surprisingly similar.
I used the handy audio pronunciation feature on my dictionary, and I am not a German speaker, but I can definitely see how that eggcorn might have occurred.
> An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase which is plausible when used in the same context. Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitting or creative malapropism. Eggcorns often arise as people attempt to make sense of a stock phrase that uses a term unfamiliar to them, as for example replacing "Alzheimer's disease" with "old-timers' disease", or William Shakespeare's "to the manner born" with "to the manor born". The autological word "eggcorn" is itself an eggcorn, derived from acorn.
I find it a big stretch to consider 'ciao' phonetically similar to 'cheers', at least in terms of confusing them which I doubt any English speaker would.
From Norman French, "face, merry faces, festivity"; from Late Latin, "head".
The sense of smiling, merry expression, good cheer, cheerful, is well attested in literature. "Cheers" is a versatile modern expression. I have heard it as "thanks", "drink well" (of course), and yes even "see you later".
I think you’re right. You do (or, at least, when I imagine it in my head, I do) hear it frequently used when saying goodbye, but I don’t think it would be used to say goodbye.
If someone said ‘cheers’ to me when parting, I’d interpret it the same way as if they’d said ‘thanks’ — which could be slightly strange, depending on the situation.
this is an interesting point. perhaps then the original meaning covered goodbye and it's drifted towards mostly meaning thank you, but then there's some drift back towards goodbye? god but language is complicated though. undoubtedly I'm wrong and it's far more complex
Ok, but you can also use "thanks" as a goodbye. Consider ending a phone call, maybe "thanks" is for whatever they called about, but it's effectively "goodbye" before hanging up.
you can use it in place of goodbye, but you would be using it with different meaning. this is illustrated by the fact that there are certain situations in which you would never end an interaction with "thanks", but you might "goodbye". for example ending a call with a lover
> 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.
I 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.
The next level i.e., rate of change of Jerk is called Jounce. However, I'm afraid I don't know how that would be described in car passenger's terms in your example.
Here’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.
I 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.
I 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.
I 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.
On 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.
IME 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.
When 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!
I 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).
Interesting. 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.
I 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.
Especially 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!)
It'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.
I watched it again recently because someone I knew had never seen it. It's actually not very funny anymore. I am still amused at a lot of the jokes in it, but more in an academic sense because I remember how funny it was. There's a lot of stuff in it that's really funny on paper but just doesn't make you actually laugh anymore. Comedy doesn't really age that well, and I believe that it's because what surprises us and what's considered "clever" inevitably changes over time.
There's certainly something to novelty wearing off with time but I don't think that diminishes historical work. When I listen to Abbott and Costello perform "Who's on First?" (c. 1938) - it's still funny. It's not intrinsically less funny because I've heard it and things it inspired many times over.
It's also in how you watch things. I sometimes catch old films in the theatre and the room is filled with laughter. I was belly laughing to The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942). Heck, I've been to see Shakespeare where everyone's laughing.
It wasn't funny when it came out, for me, and I was a big fan at the time :P
Steve Martin's comedy in general isn't funny anymore for me. I listened to his 70s albums which I found hilarious when I was a kid. Nothing about them is funny anymore. The jokes themselves aren't funny. It's only the delivery that made them funny and that style of delivery doesn't work anymore. He's been in some great movies, some of which are comedies and still funny but his own stand up comedy isn't anymore, at least for me.
Hmm. Whenever I see that expression in the context of a comedy, I assume they mean some non-PC elements are present. Maybe there are some jokes that would need to be modernized, but IIRC (saw it decades ago), it was mostly positive (like the Black family that adopted him is portrayed as poor, but nice and loving, right?)
OTOH it was a moderately-budgeted, somewhat clever comedy, those have trouble getting made today.
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.
Had 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.
I 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…
There 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?
I'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.
I 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.
So 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?
The 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.
Maybe 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.
It 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.
For 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.
A 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.
> 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.”
I 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".
Too 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!
The 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.
The 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-pe...
It's fascinating that this pattern happened the reverse direction, with a different biblical term: the word 'fool' as used in the KJV Bible translates a Jewish concept that doesn't really mean what we think of today "a person without intellectual wisdom", but at the time of writing meant more closely "a person without moral wisdom" - or perhaps without both but apparently primarily referring to the moral flaw.
I have also seen the argument that our contemporary distinction between moral and intellectual wisdom itself is something we as readers unconsciously impose on the text, with the distinction not prominently drawn in the ancient Jewish view(s).*
This means that "Fool" moved from a meaning close to "an objectionable or obnoxious person" toward "a person without intellectual wisdom" over centuries, while "jerk" apparently has gone the opposite direction within just a few recent decades.
* I'm far from an expert at this.
I 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).
Assyrian 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/Nimrud_(disambiguation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borsippa
Either way, Bugs Bunny used it sarcastically to describe Elmer Fudd, and here we are.
I 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.
Nimrod is a piece of music and an aircraft ... in my head, well before anything to do with a comic character.
That change has a singular impetus, though. The shift in a word like jerk seems to be more subtle and take longer.
For anyone that knew the reference, it was ironic. Needless to say, most of the viewers of that cartoon did not. There were more of the later than former, thus..
It's also still used as a name in Israel, I think.
I worked with a Nimrod in San Francisco. He was more of a doofus, but very affiable.
I 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.
The article specifically addresses this with the fascinating quote from Dave Berry where he reports that the definition of the word unknowingly changed in his head over the last few decades:
> “I always thought jerk meant asshole. At least I thought I always thought that, although the quotes you cite seem to suggest otherwise. So to answer your question: I have no idea. You may be right!”
I think the two concepts just aren’t that far apart in American English, and words can drift back and forth. Think about insulting the driver in the next car — it’s not always clear if you’re talking about their intelligence or lack of empathy and someone listening might get the opposite impression.
Clown can mean jerk in either sense. “Who’s this idiot?” means something closer to asshole. In old movies you’ll hear someone called “a selfish fool” or “inconsiderate fool,” where fool means something closer to asshole than fool as we usually use it.
Maybe the underlying issue is that it’s hard to tell someone acting obnoxiously because they don’t know better from someone deliberately indifferent or malicious, and the consequences are often the same.
the 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"
>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.
Possibly also because of the phonetic similarity with "ciao"?
Or "tschüß". I have a friend who speaks German and frequently says goodbye with "tschüß", and one time I heard it, thought he said "cheers" (as I often do), and then realise what he'd said—and that the two sound surprisingly similar.
I used the handy audio pronunciation feature on my dictionary, and I am not a German speaker, but I can definitely see how that eggcorn might have occurred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn
> An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase which is plausible when used in the same context. Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitting or creative malapropism. Eggcorns often arise as people attempt to make sense of a stock phrase that uses a term unfamiliar to them, as for example replacing "Alzheimer's disease" with "old-timers' disease", or William Shakespeare's "to the manner born" with "to the manor born". The autological word "eggcorn" is itself an eggcorn, derived from acorn.
I find it a big stretch to consider 'ciao' phonetically similar to 'cheers', at least in terms of confusing them which I doubt any English speaker would.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheer
From Norman French, "face, merry faces, festivity"; from Late Latin, "head".
The sense of smiling, merry expression, good cheer, cheerful, is well attested in literature. "Cheers" is a versatile modern expression. I have heard it as "thanks", "drink well" (of course), and yes even "see you later".
>and yes even "see you later".
this being my point. how do you know that what you were hearing wasn't someone saying thanks as they were leaving?
I think you’re right. You do (or, at least, when I imagine it in my head, I do) hear it frequently used when saying goodbye, but I don’t think it would be used to say goodbye.
If someone said ‘cheers’ to me when parting, I’d interpret it the same way as if they’d said ‘thanks’ — which could be slightly strange, depending on the situation.
I would have thought it means "I wish you well" which applies in both of those though more in the "goodbye" case.
this is an interesting point. perhaps then the original meaning covered goodbye and it's drifted towards mostly meaning thank you, but then there's some drift back towards goodbye? god but language is complicated though. undoubtedly I'm wrong and it's far more complex
Ok, but you can also use "thanks" as a goodbye. Consider ending a phone call, maybe "thanks" is for whatever they called about, but it's effectively "goodbye" before hanging up.
you can use it in place of goodbye, but you would be using it with different meaning. this is illustrated by the fact that there are certain situations in which you would never end an interaction with "thanks", but you might "goodbye". for example ending a call with a lover
Fucking 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/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.
Reminds me of the word nice. https://www.dictionary.com/e/nice-guys/
People still aren't on the same page and don't know it.
Hell, most people are in a different book.
language can only approximate meaning. there's an element of probability whether two parties are on the same page or even in the same volume.
I always thought it was the third derivative of position
I 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.
Both of these took some time to get there for me but maybe that's because I'm a jerk
The next level i.e., rate of change of Jerk is called Jounce. However, I'm afraid I don't know how that would be described in car passenger's terms in your example.
I personally prefer snap over jounce, as that gives the progression snap, crackle, and pop.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth,_fifth,_and_sixth_deriv...
This is what I thought the article was going to be about.
Its one of my favourite nerd jokes.
You are a 3rd derivative of position!
Oh, snap! And crackle and pop.
No you didn’t. Hacker news moment.
I sincerely was wondering whether it was about the person descriptor or the physics term.
Here’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.
I 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.
> Maybe I had already transitioned from idiot to mild asshole.
Well, happens to us all eventually, haha.
I 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.
I 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.
Where was the cutoff point?
On 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.
In 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.
IME 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.
When 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!
Apparently the trick for roller coasters is to keep the passengers hearts in the same plane so they don't perceive the ride as jerky.
Unless you are in Poland; then you need to keep the Poles in the right-hand plane or it will be unstable.
I 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!
Interesting. 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.
I 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.
Especially 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!)
It'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.
I watched it again recently because someone I knew had never seen it. It's actually not very funny anymore. I am still amused at a lot of the jokes in it, but more in an academic sense because I remember how funny it was. There's a lot of stuff in it that's really funny on paper but just doesn't make you actually laugh anymore. Comedy doesn't really age that well, and I believe that it's because what surprises us and what's considered "clever" inevitably changes over time.
I agree most of it doesn't, especially if it's about current events or captures the feeling of the era.
My Cousin Vinnie is an example that holds up still. No current events, no racist jokes, just typical social interactions that are still relevant.
There's certainly something to novelty wearing off with time but I don't think that diminishes historical work. When I listen to Abbott and Costello perform "Who's on First?" (c. 1938) - it's still funny. It's not intrinsically less funny because I've heard it and things it inspired many times over.
It's also in how you watch things. I sometimes catch old films in the theatre and the room is filled with laughter. I was belly laughing to The Palm Beach Story (Sturges, 1942). Heck, I've been to see Shakespeare where everyone's laughing.
It wasn't funny when it came out, for me, and I was a big fan at the time :P
Steve Martin's comedy in general isn't funny anymore for me. I listened to his 70s albums which I found hilarious when I was a kid. Nothing about them is funny anymore. The jokes themselves aren't funny. It's only the delivery that made them funny and that style of delivery doesn't work anymore. He's been in some great movies, some of which are comedies and still funny but his own stand up comedy isn't anymore, at least for me.
I didn’t find it very funny when it came out. It seemed too long for the single joke.
I learned about it through Freaks and Geeks, so I was in the right mood when watching The Jerk decades after its release.
Why 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.
Hmm. Whenever I see that expression in the context of a comedy, I assume they mean some non-PC elements are present. Maybe there are some jokes that would need to be modernized, but IIRC (saw it decades ago), it was mostly positive (like the Black family that adopted him is portrayed as poor, but nice and loving, right?)
OTOH it was a moderately-budgeted, somewhat clever comedy, those have trouble getting made today.
>> It could never be made today.
> Why not?
M. Emmett Walsh, Carl Reiner, Maurice Evans and Jackie Mason are all dead, for one reason.
Not that big an issue in this age of AI generated deepfake videos.
Speaking 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
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.
Other words with meanings that changed are punk, dumb, and nice. The dictionary meaning didn’t match how people understood them.
Some 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.
I don't know why, but I went into this thinking it was going to be about soda jerks.
Had 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.
I 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…
Don't get what people mean by jerking chicken when they make jerk chicken. Just applying spices I guess?
And is it a contiuum where it eventually becomes quite jerky?
There 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?
I'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.
I 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.
If you've seen Steve Martin's The Jerk, you'd know he becomes a real jerk in the modern sense during the movie.
Thought 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”.
Makes you wonder what other words have changed meaning right under your nose, without you noticing.
So 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?
The 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.
Just 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.
I wonder how much of it is that in today's society it is worse to be disagreeable than it is to be inept.
The 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.
Maybe 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.
It 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.
For 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.
No, that just describes white supremacists, and ignores Black supremacists, East Asian supremacists, Hispanista supremacists etc.
Reminds me of Albert Fish.
The correct answer is at the bottom of this thread. Down voted, [flagged] and [dead] as usual. "Jerk" is sexual slang.
Yes, 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.
Jamaican jerk is really nice.
A 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.
https://archive.is/JTdcI
the 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.”
I 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".
Too 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!
As a gay man, I disagree. I think it's a word that describes someone who doesn't consider others without realizing it.
You could try scumbag, but you might not want to know what it originally meant.
The 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.