Webster’s the name, vocab’s the game

Time for another lesson in the English language .

On Friday, in a capsule of the DVD release of “The World’s Fastest Indian,” I wrote the following: “Roger Donaldson (‘Dante’s Peak’) tells the real-life story of 60-something New Zealander Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) and his jury-rigged 1920 Indian motorcycle to record speeds over the Bonneville Salt Flats .”

I came in this morning to phone-mail message, left by someone who declined to leave her name, that said I’d made a grammatical error: The caller said, quite confidently, that there was no such phrase as “jury-rigged.” The correct terms was “jerry-rigged.”

Uh, no. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , which I consulted before writing the capsule, “jury-rig” is a transitive verb that means “supply with temporary rigging.” The term “jerry-build” means to “build insubstantially from inferior materials; build to sell but not to last.”

Munro, who was known for making his own parts, jury-rigged his bike. And though opinions varied, he was certain that his inventions were as good as the originals.

End of lesson 377.