jerkwater
adjective
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We owe the colorful Americanism jerkwater 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 water frequently, and water tanks were few and far between. As a result, the small trains that ran on rural branch lines often had to stop to take on water from local supplies. Such trains were commonly called jerkwaters from the motion of jerking the water up in buckets from the supply to the engine. The derogatory use of jerkwater for things unimportant or trivial reflects attitudes about the small middle-of-nowhere towns connected by the lines on which these jerkwater trains typically ran.
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“Jerkwater.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jerkwater. Accessed 30 Aug. 2026.
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