http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

Many of the derivative uses are in the spirit of the word, though not all. The biggest conflict was about the application of hacker to the people who break into computer systems. The criminals took the word to describe themselves (with some justice) and the mainstream computer community considered it inappropriate (maliciousness is disqualifying), deeming the criminals to be _crackers_. Sadly, the press, being the idiots they are ignored this completely and call everyone hackers, no matter how inappropriately.

Backfire came when the citizenry noted that the German stuff they could buy for cheaper prices was also a better value in that it was higher quality than what was made in the UK, tin toys and stuffed animals particularly. Eventually, “Made in Germany” became a hallmark of quality.

Same trajectory as “Made in Japan”, here in the US, actually…

“From the Latin adjutare (“to aid”) via Old French ajurie (“help or relief”)”

The old “jury rig” included an entire school of what we today call “BDAR or Battle Damage Assessment and Repair”. There were jury poles, jury knots, and a bunch of other usages and specialized tools/techniques.

Typically, there was a specific “jury rig” for a sailing ship whose rudder/steering rig was damaged. Instead of the complex pulley/rope/wheel system used by the helmsman, they would rig up an improvised system of rope cables and hawsers to tackle and eyebolts on the rudder, connecting to the rudder directly, rather than to the rudder post…

We’re getting into nautical technology and esoterica here, though…

I had heard jerry-built somewhat less.

The combined form jerry-rigged is wholly knew to me, despite attestation from the 19c. Interesting.

I would have wrongly assumed it had something to do with Germans, though I can’t imagine a time when the British assumed Germans built subpar stuff.

Hack right now retains some of that older sense, also vaguely familiar to me from the past, of just such clumsy work. Hackwork, as done by hacks. As in writing trades and others. “He’s just a hack, not a real novelist”. That sort of sentiment.

And yet, presumably derivative of the superior intellect attributed to computer hackers, the most recent meanings of hack all have the connotation of “genius shortcut”.

People truly are just on the razor’s edge of mutual unintelligibility.

When I was a kid, it meant clumsily slashing at something with a blade.

The computer meaning, whose origin I don’t know, certainly seeped out into the mainstream sometime in the late 80s or so when I was in my late teens. So I got used to that.

Ever since people started talking about life hacks, golf hacks, activity hacks of every kind, I have longed for the simplicity of hacking away at a tree with an axe.

It reached an apotheosis for me when they started blathering about the Russians hacking the election, which made me think they had tapped into voting computers. No, just the metaphorical sense of short cutting something. Louise Mensch was so hysterically committed to the mere word that anyone who agreed with her and emphasized the Russians using propaganda to influence the election without using the word hacking was greeted with the digital equivalent of maniacal screeching, “No they HACKED it!”. Saw that with own eyes.

I decided not to use hack in any sense more recent than the computer kind, after that. If only for lack of better term.

There are also a bunch of other expressions with slightly different wording and implications. We used to call something “sapper-rigged” when it was an elegant, functional non-standard use of something, for an entirely unrelated purpose to its intended use.