Rig together

Rig together

Today I’m going to show you how to use the expression, “rig together.” This is a very informal phrase. And it means to put something together, to set something up, quickly and probably not very elegantly. When you rig something together, you don’t do it the “right” way or the most effective way. You don’t follow an instruction manual. But you put something together, or you make it work, even though it might not be perfect.

Most of us, when we buy computers, we either go to a store or go to a website, we place an order, and we take a computer home or one arrives in a box. But not everyone does it that way. Some enthusiasts like to buy the individual parts. Some people have computer parts laying around their house. And they can rig together their own computer.

If you rig together a computer, you grab a spare part from here, you pick up a part from there, maybe you improvise a little bit, and the final product will work—but it won’t be nice-looking, compact, clean, not like you had just bought it from the store. If you rig together a computer it might not be pretty, it might not come with a warranty (it doesn’t come with a warranty!) but it works. You make a computer using what you have or what you can get access to. You rig it together.

It’s common to use “rig together” when you make something new out of things you have available, even if those things weren’t specifically made for your purpose. So let’s say you have an old bicycle and you want an electric bike. You can rig together a battery, a small motor, a speed sensor, and some cables. So maybe you had the battery and cables from something else, you had a motor from something different, and you bought the speed sensor.

And let’s say you’re good with this sort of thing, and after a few days in your garage, you emerge with an electric bike. What happened? You rigged together an electric bike out of stuff you had available or that you could easily get your hands on. Maybe none of those things were designed to power a bike. But you made it work. It’s not going to be the prettiest bike on the road. But it works—you rigged it together.

So that’s how we used it today with the “siren clubs” in New Zealand . These guys rig together loudspeakers and megaphones to play music. A megaphone is not designed to play music. A loudspeaker—this is something that announces a fire or something, like a public address system. These are low-tech things designed to project a person’s voice. They’re not meant to play music. They’re not meant to sound good.

But the siren clubs rig together systems that play music on a collection of megaphones and loudspeakers. This is not my idea of fun, but it takes all kinds. They modify these systems. They put them together so that multiple speakers or megaphones are playing the same thing. That’s not what they’re designed for. They’re not designed to work together. But the siren clubs find a way. And then they find a way to connect them to a music source—I’m sorry, I don’t know the details. But they do it. They rig it together.

They must modify the speakers, wire them together somehow, maybe there’s work in a workshop here, soldering? I do not know. But I know that they rig it together because they’re making these speakers work in a way they were not exactly designed to work.

MacGyver is an old TV show. MacGyver is a handyman. He’s good with stuff. And he could always find a way to use the things he had available to accomplish his goal. He carried a Swiss Army Knife, a watch, duct tape, and a toolbox. And he was always scanning the environment, scanning around him, to see what he could use to solve a problem.

One time, he rigged together a lie detector test from a blood pressure pump and an alarm clock. He used a few things he had available to make something totally new. They didn’t make the alarm clock to be used in a lie detector test. They didn’t make the blood pressure pump to be used in a lie detector test. But MacGyver rigged together a lie detector test out of those two common things.

See you next time!

And that’s all for today’s Plain English. If you are in the U.S., and I know a lot of you are, including JR, then Happy Thanksgiving to you. I hope you enjoy a day off, a good meal with new friends.

Thanks for joining us for lesson 627. We will be back on Monday with a new topic.

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