Jury-rig for a verb; kludge for a noun
To erect, construct, or arrange in a makeshift fashion. M-W
To assemble quickly or from whatever is at hand, especially for temporary use:
To jury-rig stage lights using automobile headlights. dictionary.com
Using the verb for anything makeshift may be more AmE. The OED limits it to nautical usage:
Jury, adj.
I. Compounds.
- Nautical. Used in combination to designate parts of a ship put together or contrived for temporary use. Categories
a. jury-rig n.
b. jury-rig v.
c. jury-rigged adj.
Etymology
The phrase 'jury-rigged' has been in use since at least 1788. The adjectival use of 'jury', in the sense of makeshift or temporary, has been said to date from at least 1616, when according to the 1933 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, it appeared in John Smith's A Description of New England. It appeared in Smith's more extensive The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles published in 1624.
Two theories about the origin of this usage of 'jury-rig' are:
• A corruption of jury mast; i.e., a mast for the day, a temporary mast, being a spare used when the mast has been carried away. From French jour: 'a day'.
• From the Latin adjutare: 'to aid'; via Old French ajurie: 'help' or 'relief'. Wikipedia
jury-rig; jerry-build; jerry-rig; gerry-rig. The first is an authentic nautical phrase, dating from the early 17th century. Derived from jury-mast (= temporary replacement for a ship's broken mast), the jury part here has nothing to do with 12 peers deciding someone's fate. Instead, according the Barnhardt's Dictionary of Etymology, it probably derives from the Old French word ajurie ( = help) ... Garner's Modern English Usage (2009)
For a modern noun, we have
Kludge or kluge (n)
A haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or programming problem
Just getting your documents into and out of the iPad is a kludge. You must e-mail them back and forth to yourself or sync to your computer using iTunes software. —Steve Morgenstern M-W
Both the OED and Green's Dictionary of Slang credit Jackson W. Granholm as the first person to use the term. In his 1962 essay "How to Design a Kludge," he defines kludge as "An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole." The OED calls it a "jocular invention." Ace Pilkington et al.; Science Fiction and Futurism: Their Terms and Ideas (2017)
Jury-Rigging and Whatnot
Figure 10.1 shows one of my favorite examples of jury-rigging. Ian Wilkerson, a colleague in Sydney, had a leak in his roof and asked a journeyman friend to help. The man rigged a funnel attached below the leak, to a tube leading out the front door over a railing, drooping toward the ground, slowly draining. Finding that a lamp in his house was hanging too low, the man also slung the lamp cord over the tube, jury rigging on jury rigging. Stuart Kauffman; A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life (2019)
We continually jury-rig aspects of our outward appearance, persona, and achievements in order to gain the acceptance and accolades from others that we can't provide to ourselves. Laurie Warren; Wild World, Joyful Heart (2019)
But the most puzzling thing about it was that the whole thing seemed to be just jury-rigged–as if someone had done no more than a hurried, patch-up job to get the set back in working order on an emergency and temporary basis. Clifford Simak; The Big Front Yard (2015)