jerk-water

Definitions

1. 1

   A branch line train, using light equipment

   • The mail was brought by a tiny "jerk-water" bobtail dummy and coach run by one, Tony, from Pearl City, a mile away, to a station near the end of the peninsula.
2. 2

   Of an inhabited place, small, isolated, backward.

   • That seems to disappoint them, for every sociologist likes to go back to some jerk-water college and tell those who are in the sociological class how they had to get their information by pantomime."
3. 3

   Railroads with low traffic.

   • He had risen to the head of the greatest street car system in the world from the position of brakeman on a jerk-water railroad.
   • Can the keen-minded Mr. Willard at Baltimore be more anxious than the keen-minded Mr. Rea at Philadelphia to undertake the management of jerk-water branches in Connecticut or in Rhode Island or down on Cape Cod ?

The neighborhood

• synonymSee: Thesaurus:remote place
• neighborjerk water
• neighborjerkwater