The ironically named No Agua water stop on the Denver & Rio Grande railroad line near No Agua, New Mexico; photo of a 10,000-gallon water tank with a flatbed railroad car in front of it, a building with a sign reading “No Agua” is in the background
4 March 2021
The adjective jerkwater denotes something small or insignificant, and it’s often found in the phrase jerkwater town. The word comes from the idea of a small town where a stagecoach would only stop because it affords the chance to water the horses, and in later use it would extend to railroad lines. But why exactly jerk was chosen as the first element is uncertain. It may come from strategically placed water tanks along the stage and later rail line where one could pull on a chain to begin the flow of water, or it could be from the idea of pulling water from a stream or trough in buckets. (Cf. jerk). https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/jerk-jerk-off
We see jerkwater applied to a small stagecoach line as early as 1852. From the Miami County Sentinel of Peru, Indiana:
Here [i.e., Stillwater, Minnesota] they are building the Penitentiary and there is the land office and there come the steamboats, either on their way up or down the Mississippi; and although you might contrive to go across in a sort of jerk water stage, from Stillwater to St. Paul, by land, you will probably prefer to around in the boat.
And by a decade later, the term had transferred over to railroad lines. From the Morgan County Gazette of Martinsville, Indiana of 19 September 1863:
We hear it again rumored that an attempt is to be made to revive the old “jerk-water” railroad from here to Franklin. We haven’t much faith in the project.
And jerkwater generalized to refer to anything small or provincial by the end of the next decade. From an article in the Indianapolis paper The People of 6 January 1877. It is in reference to a paper named The Sentinel, but which one I am unable to determine. It could be the aforementioned Miami Country Sentinel or the Fort Wayne Sentinel or another paper:
As a sample of this jerk-water editorial lunatic’s stuff, which he doles out to his nauseated patrons, just gaze on this.
The early uses I cite here are all from Indiana, and the term could very well have started as a regionalism in that state. But the Dictionary of American Regional English’s surveys give it a wider range in the latter half of the twentieth century. It’s found across the northern and western United States, from western New York state and Pennsylvania to California. It’s missing in New England and the South and Southwest, being found only as far south as Maryland and West Virginia.
Sources:
Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. jerkwater, adj.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, jerkwater, adj.
“Minnesota.” Miami County Sentinel (Peru, Indiana), 6 May 1852, 1. NewspaperArchive.com.
Morgan County Gazette (Martinsville, Indiana), 19 September 1863, 4. NewspaperArchive.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2019, s.v. jerkwater, adj. and n.
“Where Will Greeley Republicans Go Now?” The People (Indianapolis), 6 January 1877, 3. NewspaperArchive.com.
Photo credit: James St. John, 24 July 2009, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.