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OneKitly

jerky

adjectivenounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈd͡ʒɜːki//
  • United States//ˈd͡ʒɝki//

Characterized by physical jerking, or by sudden and uneven progress.

adjective

  1. 1

    Characterized by physical jerking, or by sudden and uneven progress.

    jerky flight

    jerky movement

    jerky sounds

  2. 2

    Having the behavior of a jerk (unpleasant person).

    jerky guy

    jerky behaviour

  3. 3

    datedAnxious; jumpy.

Etymology

Etymology tree English jerk Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English jerky From jerk + -y.

noun

  1. 1

    Lean meat cured and preserved by cutting into thin strips and air-drying in the sun.

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish charqui, from Quechua charki.

verb

  1. 1

    To cure and preserve (meat) by drying it, making jerky.

Forms

plural
jerkies
comparative
jerkier
superlative
jerkiest
past tense
jerkied
past participle
jerkied
present participle
jerkying
third person singular
jerkies
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).