jerkwater

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The Word of the Day for October 24 is:=20

jerkwater   \JERK-waw-ter\   adjective
         *1 : remote and unimportant=20
     2 : trivial=20

Example sentence:
     "We're stranded in some jerkwater town in the middle of nowhere," s=
aid Larry when he called to tell us that the car's engine had blown.=20

Did you know?
          We owe the colorful Americanism =E2=80=9Cjerkwater=E2=80=9D to=
 the invention of the steam engine -- an advancement that significantly =
accelerated travel by rail but also had its drawbacks. One drawback was =
that the boilers of the early locomotives needed to be refilled with wat=
er frequently, and water tanks were few and far between. As a result, th=
e small trains that ran on rural branch lines often had to stop to take =
on water from local supplies. Such trains were commonly called =E2=80=9C=
jerkwaters=E2=80=9D from the motion of jerking the water up in buckets f=
rom the supply to the engine. The derogatory use of =E2=80=9Cjerkwater=E2=
=80=9D for things unimportant or trivial reflects the fact that these je=
rkwater trains typically ran on lines connecting small middle-of-nowhere=
 towns.





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