 English vocabulary word of the day, jerk, from espressoenglish.net. First let's learn how to pronounce it. The J sounds like in the words juice, jam, and journey. And the letters ER sound like in the words were, learn, and bird. Say the word after me, jerk. The word jerk refers to a sudden, forceful, pull, push, or movement. For example, I jerked my hand away from the hot stove. If the stove is hot and you put your hand near it, you would remove your hand very fast because the stove is hot. Now you can say, I jerked my hand away. The word jerked refers to a sudden movement. Here's another example. The train moved forward with a jerk. This means that the train started moving forward suddenly and with a lot of force. It wasn't a smooth movement. Now there's another meaning for the word jerk. If you call a person a jerk, it means that person is mean and they treat other people badly. For example, he told lies about me to all my friends. What a jerk. Some jerk hit my car in the parking lot and drove off. So again, calling someone a jerk means that the person is mean or rude. This is insulting, so be careful when you use this word. We also have a phrasal verb, jerk someone around, meaning to manipulate, deceive, or take unfair advantage of another person. For example, she doesn't really like him. She's just pretending she does because she likes to jerk him around. Jerking someone around is not a nice thing to do to someone. Alright, so now you know the word jerk. To continue your study of vocabulary, check out my vocabulary builder course, which will teach you a lot more new words every day. You can click on the link in the video to take some free sample lessons.