There are a few places in the article that they refer to the modern usage as being similar to "asshole", which was interesting to me because I've often been mystified about that word and it's relationship to "ass". When used alone, "ass" to me feels like it's roughly synonymous as when it's prefixed with "dumb", which would seem to relate to that old meaning of "jerk", but with "hole" on the end, it's equivalent to the modern version of "jerk". Putting aside my usual questions about what makes the hole smarter but more rude, maybe "jerk" just gained an implicit hole? And can this tell us anything about whether "jerkwad" will evolve beyond jerk in a generation or two?