jarp
/d͡ʒɑːp/US/d͡ʒɑɹp/
jarp noun: the act of knocking one's pace egg (“a coloured hard-boiled egg traditionally made at Easter”) against that of an opponent, with the aim of cracking the other's egg and leaving one's own intact, an Easter custom in many countries.
Noun
jarp (plural jarps)
- The act of knocking one's pace egg (“a coloured hard-boiled egg traditionally made at Easter”) against that of an opponent, with the aim of cracking the other's egg and leaving one's own intact, an Easter custom in many countries.
- Making these Easter or anytime decorated hard-boiled eggs is a tradition in northern England where they are known as paste eggs (or pace eggs as they are called in other areas). They are used in jarping competitions, in which each child holds an egg pointy end up and tries to crack their opponent's...2017, Linda Tubby, “Flower-power Paste Eggs”, in Cracked: Creative and Easy Ways to Cook with Eggs, London: Kyle Books, →ISBN
Verb
jarp (third-person singular simple present jarps, present participle jarping, simple past and past participle jarped)
- To knock (a pace egg) against that of an opponent, with the aim of cracking the other's egg and leaving one's own intact.
- Many of the lads, however, have a much speedier method of either adding to their store of food or losing their egg. They jaup or jarp them together, i.e. one lad strikes his egg against that of his opponent, when one or both are broken; if only one, it is forfeited and becomes the property of the...1898, Richard Blakeborough, “Customs of the Year and Folklore”, in Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire […], London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press […], →OCLC...
- Jarping hard-boiled eggs (sometimes the painted ones, but often we didn't want to sacrifice our laboriously decorated works of art) on Easter Monday; it was like conkers – you jarped one end of your pace egg against the end of someone else's and the winner was the egg that hadn't cracked, or still...1960s, Steve Roud, quoting a person from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, “The Children’s Year”, in The Lore of the Playground: One Hundred Years of Children’s Games, Rhymes & Traditions, London: Random...
Examples of jarp in a sentence
- They are used in jarping competitions, in which each child holds an egg pointy end up and tries to crack their opponent's egg with one jarp, without breaking their own.2017, Linda Tubby, “Flower-power Paste Eggs”, in Cracked: Creative and Easy Ways to Cook with Eggs, London: Kyle Books, →ISBN:
- They jaup or jarp them together, i.e. one lad strikes his egg against that of his opponent, when one or both are broken; if only one, it is forfeited and becomes the property of the conqueror.1898, Richard Blakeborough, “Customs of the Year and Folklore”, in Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire […]...
- Here he [Sid Chaplin] learnt to swim and how to jarp Easter eggs; he played with penkers, and shutty ring with glass alleys, and sometimes the men joined in games of tipcat.1987, Sid Chaplin, “The Night of the News”, in Michael Chaplin, Rene Chaplin, editors, In Blackberry Time, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and...
Forms of jarp
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | jarps |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | jarps |
| present participle | jarping |
| past participle | jarped |
| past | jarped |
Origin of jarp
Borrowed from Scots jaup (“(noun) dash or splash of mud, water, etc.; broken piece, fragment; light blow, slap; (verb) of water: to dash; to splash; to cause a splash by striking the surface of or throwing water; to bespatter or splash (mud, water, etc.); (obsolete) to knock about, manhandle”), perhaps from jalp, jilp (“to spill, splash, squirt”), probably originally imitative of a splash.
Words formed from jarp
Words that rhyme with jarp
Questions about jarp
- What does jarp mean?
- Jarp means the act of knocking one's pace egg (“a coloured hard-boiled egg traditionally made at Easter”) against that of an opponent, with the aim of cracking the other's egg and leaving one's own intact, an Easter custom in many countries.
- How do you use jarp in a sentence?
- They are used in jarping competitions, in which each child holds an egg pointy end up and tries to crack their opponent's egg with one jarp, without breaking their own.
- What part of speech is jarp?
- Jarp can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce jarp?
- Jarp is pronounced /d͡ʒɑːp/ (UK).
- What is the plural of jarp?
- The plural of jarp is jarps.
Words near jarp in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jarp (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-jarp.wav.
Cite this entry: “jarp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jarp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.