A term given to blackened food, usually Jamaican flavored, that is, with ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Beef jerky, a snack of dried beef sold in convenience stores, is a kind of jerk, a strip of meat preserved without salt by drying it in the sun. The word jerk derives from the Quechua language, spoken by the indigenous peoples of Peru, including those once under the rule of the Inca Empire. The Quechua called meat preserved in this manner charqui, a word borrowed by Spanish Americans before being adopted by English in the early eighteenth century as jerk.
A sudden movement of part of the body which indicates that the local reflex arc is intact.
Sudden movement; a muscle reflex. Efforts to elicit certain jerks (e.g., the knee jerk) are used to help diagnose specific nerve transmission disorders.
The sudden contraction of a muscle in response to a nerve impulse. The knee jerk see patellar reflex) is the reflex kicking movement produced by contraction of the quadriceps muscle of the thigh after it has been stretched by tapping the tendon below the knee. Eliciting this and other jerks, such as the ankle and elbow jerks, is a means of testing the nerve pathways, via the spinal cord, which are involved in reflexes.
A sudden involuntary movement. The term is often used to describe the tendon reflexes.