as in to patch (together)
to make or assemble roughly or hastily we jury-rigged shelves out of cartons and crates until we could afford real furniture

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Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of jury-rig After arriving, Waters pointed a flashlight at a fuse box to jury-rig the generator’s connection. Chris Kenning, USA TODAY, 30 Sep. 2024 But Ukraine’s military engineers have already shown surprising skill in jury-rigging older weapons systems with more modern firepower. Lara Jakes, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2024 Amid those punishing strikes, Ukraine scrambled to stay ahead of mounting damage, with repair crews working around the clock and under fire, desperately jury-rigging old equipment and rationing precious power. Laura King, Los Angeles Times, 3 Oct. 2023 Despite the extreme heat, butchers laid out raw meat on the hoods of their cars, whacking away flies with branches or fly swatters jury-rigged with plastic bags. Valerie Hopkins Emile Ducke, New York Times, 11 Aug. 2023 Observers got a sneak peek of this tactic in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Azerbaijan recently used 1940s-era An-2 biplanes that were jury-rigged to operate remotely. Jason Lyall, Foreign Affairs, 16 Dec. 2020 The big gun is jury-rigged on the back of a flatbed truck. James Levinson, Fox News, 13 Apr. 2023 Taylor plays Inez, a young Harlem fast talker who decides to jury-rig a family by any means necessary. Helena Andrews-Dyer, Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2023 This wasn’t new—the Islamic State had also used drones to drop grenades in Iraq—but Ukraine started doing this on a professional, unprecedented scale, says Zwijnenburg, moving from jury-rigging devices to drop hand grenades to 3D-printing parts that turn ordinary commercial drones into weapons. WIRED, 24 Feb. 2023

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Cite this Entry

“Jury-rig.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/jury-rig. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

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