I prefer the term "douchebag" for its inclusivity. People of all ages know you're calling the person an asshole. I've also noticed Mormons are less offended by "douchebag" than "asshole".

I always thought it was the third derivative of position

I don't know why, but I went into this thinking it was going to be about soda jerks.

If you've seen Steve Martin's The Jerk, you'd know he becomes a real jerk in the modern sense during the movie.

I'm too young to be a benchmark but I remember the former meaning having a connotation of being annoying to or causing problems for others, but inadvertently so. As in, you're a dimwit who means no harm, but does so because you're a dimwit. But maybe by that time the transformation was already underway.

When I hear jerk my first thought is always as the second derivative of velocity, because I had a TA in college who was specifically studying jerk as it relates to autonomous driving -- back in the 90s!

So he taught us how to calculate it and its importance, because it turns out the car can handle a lot more jerk than the humans inside!

I wonder if it used to be that people largely weren’t on the same page, and didn’t know it. It’s not like people consult dictionaries to learn what slang means, or even usually ask somebody, and the definitions are related enough that responses usually don’t distinguish them. I’ve noticed it’s not uncommon online that a post’s likes are split between opposing interpretations, like agreeing with its politics vs seeing it as satire of politics one disagrees with.

I wonder how much of it is that in today's society it is worse to be disagreeable than it is to be inept.

A possible reason people forget the previous meaning despite having used it with the old meaning is that they may have understood and used the new meaning for ages but used the old meaning in more formal settings.

Makes you wonder what other words have changed meaning right under your nose, without you noticing.

It's a good time as any to remind everyone that The Jerk is still one of the funniest movies ever made. It could never be made today, and I suggest you pick up a copy if you've never seen it.

The evolution of "jerk" makes me also think of "nimrod" and how it referred to the biblical hunter and meant someone with great skills in hunting, until it was used to refer to Elmer Fudd, at which point the meaning changed to mean a complete idiot.

Interesting. I'm thirty-something and I do seem to remember my grandparents using "jerk" to mean "idiot", but for my entire life I've always thought of it as a kid-friendly way to say "asshole".

It always confused me when my grandparents would call someone who was perfectly nice a "jerk", and it wasn't until I watched the Steve Martin movie four or five years ago that I understood why.

The meaning changing without noticing thing is interesting but not hugely surprising to me. Besides a few cartoons on TV and maybe some films, in my early life I exclusively spoke and heard British English, but with the proliferation of American English via the internet, there are a lot of words that I know full that I originally pronounced in "British", but now I'm not really sure which is the "correct" pronunciation. "Lever" and "Leverage" are good examples of words where I noticed this and had to figure out which was which. Obviously there's a difference between pronunciation and meaning, and of course I'm aware of the shift, but it feels like a similar thing.