Also 8 jirk. [Corrupted from American Sp. charque-ar in same sense, f. chargue, charqui, ad. Quichua (Peruvian) ccharqui ‘dried flesh, unsalted, in long strips.’ The verb in Quichua was ccharquini ‘to prepare dried meat, to jerk,’ whence perh. the early cognate JERKIN sb.3 The word is now used in all parts of Spanish America, and was app. found by English navigators in Spanish use in the W. Indies. (See Skeat, Trans. Philol. Soc., 1885, 94.)]
trans. To cure (meat, esp. beef) by cutting it into long thin slices and drying it in the sun.
1707. Sloane, Jamaica, I. p. xvi. They [the wild hogs] are shot,… cut open, the bones taken out, and the flesh gash’d on the inside into the skin, filled with salt, and exposed to the sun, which is called Jirking.
1748. Anson’s Voy., III. ii. 305. He … was sent here with twenty-two Indians to jerk beef.
1760–72. trans. Juan & Ulloa’s Voy. (ed. 3), II. 329. Killing cattle; more for the sake of their hides, and tallow, than their flesh; of which, nevertheless, they jerk great quantities for the use of such ships as sail from Pernambuco.
1807. P. Gass, Jrnl., 19. At 12 we stopped to jirk our meat, and again proceeded at two.
1859. R. F. Burton, Centr. Afr., in Jrnl. Geog. Soc., XXIX. 202. When a bullock is killed they either jerk the meat, or dry it upon a dwarf platform of sticks raised above a slow and smoky fire.
1863. Lit. Times, 4 July. (Tracks across Australia), Two of the horses were slaughtered for food—one jerked, the other boiled down.
Hence Jerked ppl. a., Jerking vbl. sb.
1712. W. Rogers, Voy. round World, 199. They export … Rice, Cotton, and some dry’d Jerkt Beef.
1726. Shelvocke, Voy. round World, 116.
1812. J. J. Henry, Camp. agst. Quebec, 47. Preserve our provisions by jerking.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunters, xxvii. 201. Yonder goes the jerking-line!
1865. Leeds Mercury, 22 Feb., 3/1. Experiments are being made in Aldershott camp with the South American ‘jerked beef’ with a view to its introduction in the army.
Jerk v.3: see JERQUE v.
