A jerkin is a man's short close-fitting jacket, made usually of light-colored leather, and often without sleeves, worn over the doublet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term is also applied to a similar sleeveless garment worn by the British Army in the twentieth century.

The stock phrase, buff jerkin, refers to an oiled oxhide jerkin, as worn by soldiers.

The origin of the word is unknown. The Dutch word jurk, a child's frock, often taken as the source, is modern, and represents neither the sound nor the sense of the English word.

Leather jerkins of the sixteenth century were often slashed and punched, both for decoration and to improve the fit.

Jerkins were worn closed at the neck and hanging open over the peascod-bellied fashion of doublet. At the turn of the seventeenth century, the fashion was to wear the jerkin buttoned at the waist and open above to reflect the fashionable narrow-waisted silhouette.

By the mid-seventeenth century, jerkins were high-waisted and long-skirted like doublets of the period.