jerky
Other forms: jerkier; jerkies
Something that's jerky has a bumpy, lurching kind of rhythm, like a jerky off-road ride in a jeep. Another kind of jerky is dried meat. You could chew your beef jerky to calm yourself on that jerky ride.
A jerky carnival ride starts and stops abruptly, and a jerky old movie might be choppy and shaky. When jerky is a noun, it's a dense, chewy type of dried meat. This second kind of jerky is an American word, adapted from the Spanish to originally be charqui, from an Incan root word, ch'arki, literally "dried flesh."
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marked by abrupt transitions
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lacking a steady rhythmsynonyms: arrhythmic, jerkingunsteadysubject to change or variation
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having or revealing stupidity
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meat (especially beef) cut in strips and dried in the sunsynonyms: jerk, jerked meattypes:beef jerkystrips of dried beefbiltongmeat that is salted and cut into strips and dried in the suntype of:meatthe flesh of animals (including fishes and birds and snails) used as food
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Vocabulary lists containing jerky
Quechua, which actually refers to several languages spoken throughout the Andes mountain range, has a total of between 8 and 10 million speakers. It is the most widely spoken indigenous language of the Americas. Here is a list of 15 words that English borrowed from Quechua, and while some of them are specific to a life in the Andes, a few, like the animal names, are fully incorporated into English.
Gerald has faced many tough situations — the imprisonment of his mother, the death of his beloved aunt, and the abuse of his stepfather — but he is determined to make a better life for himself and his sister Angel. Learn these words from the second novel in the Hazelwood High trilogy.
Twelve-year-old Shayla doesn't like to make waves—but as she navigates middle school and educates herself about prejudice in her community, she learns that sometimes it's good to cause a little trouble.