jape
/d͡ʒeɪp/
jape noun: a joke or quip.
Noun
jape (plural japes)
- A joke or quip.
- [H]e clapped hand to thigh, and laughed and laughed until the air rang again.
"Oho, a jape—a jape indeed!" he roared.1920, Jeffery Farnol, The Geste of Duke Jocelyn, Fytte 9 - “Now I come to think of it, I suppose schooling isn't such a bad idea as long as he can have some japes and tomfoolery with his young cohorts.” “My love, it will be very good for him and very good for us.”2022 August 9, Ayo Edebiri & Shana Gohd, “Private School” (5:57 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 4, episode 5, spoken by Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry)
- Synonyms:
- joke
- [H]e clapped hand to thigh, and laughed and laughed until the air rang again.
- A prank or trick.
- In London or New York in the late 1970s dada meant what it meant in Paris and New York at the end of the First World War: a not-quite-naked prank, a jape clothed in the barest g-string of aesthetic authority, a Bronx cheer in three-part harmony, Tzara's affirmation of the right “to piss and shit in...1989, Greil Marcus, “The Art of Yesterday's Crash”, in Lipstick Traces, Faber & Faber, published 2009
Verb
jape (third-person singular simple present japes, present participle japing, simple past and past participle japed)
- To jest; play tricks.
- Now the Lond of Egypt longeth to the Soudan, yet the Soudan longeth not to the Lond of Egypt. And when I say this, I do jape with words, and may hap ye understond me not.1886, Andrew Lang, “To Sir John Manndeville”, in Letters to Dead Authors
- To mock; deride.
- To have sexual intercourse with.
- Nay, brother, lay hand on him soon; / For he japed my wife, and made me cuckold.1510, Hycke Scorner; “Hickscorner”, in Robert Dodsley, William Carew Hazlitt, editors, A Select Collection of Old English Plays, 4th edition, volume 1, London: Reeves and Turner, 1874, page 171
- I jape a wench […] it is better to jape a wenche than to do worce.1530, John Palsgrave, L'esclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, Paris: Impremierie Nationale, published 1852, page 589
- Synonyms:
- coitize, go to bed with, sleep with, Formal terms, bed, coit, dight, enjoy, feague, go in unto
jape meaning in Urdu and Bengali
jape in Urdu
- jape
- استہزا istehzā
jape in Bengali
- কৌতুক, রঙ্গ
Examples of jape in a sentence
- Alex: Your husband's trying to kill you. / Clara: If this is another of your absurd japes...2025, Black Mirror, season 7, episode 3, spoken by Alex Palmer and Clara (Issa Rae and Emma Corrin):
- To jape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupye.1598, Florio, Worlde of Wordes:
Synonyms of jape
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- jibe
- josh
- kid
- lampoon
- mimic
- mock
- needle
- rib
- roast
- satirize
- scoff
- scorn
- slag
- tease
- twit
- bust on
- extract the urine
- clown around
- make a fool of
- make sport of
- poke fun at
- take the piss
- coitize
- go to bed with
- sleep with
- Formal terms
- bed
- coit
- enjoy
- have
Forms of jape
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | japes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | japes |
| present participle | japing |
| past participle | japed |
| past | japed |
Origin of jape
From Middle English japen (“to deceive, play tricks on; act foolishly, joke; have sex with”), of uncertain origin, but perhaps combining Old French japer (“to bark, howl, scream; chatter, gossip”) with gaber (“to mock, deride”). See also gab, Old Occitan japar, jaupar (“to bark, yelp, yap”), related to Old Saxon galpōn (“to cry loudly, make a noise, brag”) (Low German galpen (“to bark, howl, scream”)), Middle High German gelpfen (“to scream, bark, boast, proclaim”), Old Norse gjálpa (“to yelp”) (dialectal Swedish galpa (“to cry, screech”)). More at yelp, yawp, yap.
Words formed from jape
Words that rhyme with jape
21 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about jape
- What does jape mean?
- Jape means a joke or quip.
- What is jape in Urdu?
- Jape in Urdu is استہزا (istehzā). See Jape meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use jape in a sentence?
- Alex: Your husband's trying to kill you. / Clara: If this is another of your absurd japes...
- What part of speech is jape?
- Jape can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce jape?
- Jape is pronounced /d͡ʒeɪp/.
- What is the plural of jape?
- The plural of jape is japes.
Words near jape in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jape (page history and authors); استہزا (Urdu) (page history and authors); jape (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-jape.wav.
Cite this entry: “jape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.