Jerry-built means put up cheaply, quickly, and badly. A jerry-built house may look finished, but the walls are thin, the work is careless, and it may not last. English uses it most about buildings. People also stretch it, a little loosely, to anything thrown together in a hurry — a stall, a plan, a piece of kit. It is not a kind word: it judges the work. Nobody knows for sure where the jerry part comes from. There are many stories, and none of them is solid, so it is wiser to learn the meaning than to repeat an origin. It is not about a man named Jerry, and it is not “jury-built.”