tinker

英 ['tɪŋkə] 美 ['tɪŋkɚ]

1. perhaps tinkle => tink => tinker.
2. in allusion to the metallic sounds made by tinkers repairing pots.

tinker 补锅匠

可能来自拟声词，-er,人。比喻用法。

tinker: tinker: [13] Etymologically, a tinker is probably a ‘worker in tin’. It could well be descended from an unrecorded Old English *tinecere, a plausible derivative of tin. There is an alternative possibility, however: it may have been derived from the now obsolete verb tink ‘tinkle’ (which, like tinkle [14] itself, was of imitative origin), in allusion to the metallic sounds made by tinkers repairing pots (northern and Scottish dialects had the word tinkler for ‘tinker’).
tinker (n.): "mender of kettles, pots, pans, etc.," late 14c. (mid-13c. as a surname), of uncertain origin. Some connect the word with the sound made by light hammering on metal. Tinker's damn "something slight and worthless" is from 1824, probably preserving tinkers' reputation for free and casual use of profanity; the plain and simple etymology is not good enough for some writers, and since 1877 an ingeniously elaborate but baseless derivation has been circulated claiming the second word is really dam.
tinker (v.): 1590s, "to work as a tinker," from tinker (n.). Meaning "work imperfectly, keep busy in a useless way," is first found 1650s. Related: Tinkered; tinkering.

4. It isn't profane any more to say tinker's dam.: 说‘tinker'sdam’这样的话不应再被看作是一种‘亵渎’.

5. It is not enough to tinker at the edges; our objective must be to reconstruct the entire system.: 只在外缘做一些小修小补是不够的，我们的目标必须是重建整个系统。