jim crow
- noun
- /dʒɪm kroʊ/
- Archaic
:
palanca
- You can pull nails out easily with a jim crow thanks to its built-in claw.
Examples
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The carpenter used a jim crow to pry up the old floorboards.
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He used a jim crow to remove the nails from the wooden beam.
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She found an old jim crow in her grandfather's toolbox.
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The carpenter always carries a jim crow in his toolbox.
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The carpenter used a jim crow to pry up the old floorboards.
-
You can pull nails out easily with a jim crow thanks to its built-in claw.
-
She found an old jim crow in her grandfather's toolbox.
Synonyms
45
2.9
A heavy metal bar with a curved end used to force things open and pull out nails
1
5.6
A hammer with a curved end for pulling out nails
A small axe with a curved, split back used to pull nails and cut wood
Surface Forms
Morphology
jim + crow
The element 'jim' is not a meaningful lexical item for learners and 'crow' names a bird, so their pairing does not compositionally yield the idea of a metal tool. The term is lexicalized and/or proper-name-based rather than following normal transparent compounding (unlike 'crowbar'), so a B1 learner who only knows the parts would not predict the tool meaning.
Etymology
Jim crow may come from the tool's curved end that looks like a crow's beak and from the old word 'jemmy' for a small pry bar. So a jim crow is a bar with a claw used to pull nails.