jackleg

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 7, 2015 is: jackleg • \JACK-leg\  • adjective 1 a : characterized by unscrupulousness, dishonesty, or lack of professional standards b : lacking skill or training : amateur 2 : designed as a temporary expedient : makeshift Examples: Bill's only a jackleg carpenter, but he is sufficiently competent to handle less complex jobs. "Local engineers knew even during construction that the canal upgrade was a bit of a jackleg job." — Christopher Cooper and Robert Block, Disaster, 2006 Did you know? Don't call someone jackleg unless you're prepared for that person to get angry with you. Throughout its 165-year-old history in English, jackleg has most often been used as a term of contempt and deprecation, particularly in reference to lawyers and preachers. Its form echoes that of the similar blackleg, an older term for a cheating gambler or a worker opposed to union policies. Etymologists know that blackleg appeared over fifty years before jackleg, but they don't have any verifiable theories about the origin of either term. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.