> I hesitated a long time before posting trying to
> come up with a more precise term than "jerk" --
> I still don't have the term.
Pittsburghese (http://www.pittsburghese.com) has the term "jagoff," which captures things perfectly, I think.
I'm no linguist, but I'm intrigued by the number of regionalisms from the peculiar dialect of Da Burgh which are of Eastern European derivation. In the "nouns" section (perhaps that should be "nahns" section?) of the Pittsburghese website (http://www.pittsburghese.com/glossary.ep.html?type=nouns) they list "babushka" and "dupa," among other words which are clearly not Pittsburghisms per se but words taken directly from Polish, Serbo-Croatian, etc. Whether Pittsburgh's heavy Slavic-derived population has anything to do with the peculiar pronunciation ("dahntahn," "worsh," "Stillers," etc.) or regional vocabulary ("gumband," "jaggers," etc.) in other ways besides the obvious contributions of Slavic-derived words is unclear.
John Lacny