Meaning of jackleg | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Amateur, untrained; incompetent.
   US, not-comparable
2. Dishonest, unscrupulous.
   US, not-comparable
3. Ineptly built or operated; makeshift.
   US, not-comparable

Examples

“1841, Letter to the editor, The Southern Planter, Volume I, No. 1, January 1841, p. 12, The next year I had a projecting kind of jack leg carpenter, from Hanover, living with me in the capacity of overseer […]”

“1941, Martha Colquitt, Interview published in Slave Narratives, Library of Congress Project, Volume 4: Georgia Narratives, Part 1, Grandma didn’t think⟳ chillun ought to see⟳ funerals, so de first one I ever seed, wuz when ma died two years atter de War wuz done over. A jackleg colored preacher talked, but he didn’t have⟳ sense⟳ ’nuff to preach a sho’ ’nuff sermon.”

“1957, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Wolfbane, Chapter 11, in Galaxy Science Fiction, He was a doer, not a thinker; his skills were the skills of an artisan, a tinkerer, a jackleg mechanic.”

“At the gas station on the corner, a jackleg work⟳ crew was attaching plywood to the windows.”

“The little nosy reporter with the hair was fair crazy to come⟳, but McGinty gets a jackleg doctor to examine⟳ him an’ swear⟳ that he’s sufferin’ from spatulation o’ the medulla oblongata, housemaid’s knee, and the hives.”

“Villard’s great fortune should not be allowed to “dangle” in plain sight of “jack-leg lawyers,” while he, Parkins, awaited final results of the proceedings.”

“When I went to the so-called authorities for help⟳ I ran into jackleg politicians, wheeler-dealers, henchmen, finaglers and wire-pullers.”

“The train⟳ is late […]. ¶ “Well, if I come⟳ to such a place⟳ as this I must expect⟳ a jackleg railroad […].””

““With the first good rain⟳ the entire jackleg contraption might collapse around my ears […]””

“2005, William Hoffman, Lies, Montgomery, Alabama: River City Publishing, Chapter 23, p. 226, Driving the secondhand Chevy pickup, he visits not only major car dealerships but also every jackleg garage he happens upon in dusty sun-blasted towns of the Deep South.”

“[…] he went first to the barn […] and made a jackleg bed with hay and an old mule blanket.”

CEFR level