Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To joke or quip.
- v. To make sport of.
- n. A joke or quip.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To jest; to play tricks; to jeer.
- v. To mock; to trick.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a humorous anecdote or remark intended to provoke laughter
Etymologies
- Middle English japen, probably from Old French japer, to yap, chatter, nag, of imitative origin.
Examples
“We don’t want to criminalise a group of students, but at the same time we don’t want to treat the problem as some kind of jape, either.”
“Even Ponting describes the quiet as "appalling" on one of his intertitles, which otherwise often have a jolly-jape feel.”
The Guardian: The disquieting sound of The Great White Silence
“That eye wanted to cross, to discredit Perkus Tooth's whole sober aura with a comic jape.”
“The Huffington Post noted the references as well as more "jokes" in the same vein (including a video of Cooper's jape, over which David Gergen cluelessly chortles).”
“I remember when I was a young boy, 1 April fell on a Saturday, so the Football League decided to create a 'hilarious' jape by sending referees and linesmen with thematically linked names to the same game," recalls Robin Tucker.”
“Cambridge Union Society's pole-dancing jape is just plain daft.”
The Guardian: Actually, you won't find female empowerment halfway up a pole
“People would halt the progress of whatever parley they were engaged in and turn to stop him in aisles and antechambers, demanding an instant jape or trick from him.”
“Such little verses always made the best sort of jape.”
“A little jape on himself, and one that would certainly deliver more concrete rewards than his loftier verse.”
“Chef Nikki Billington and her partner Paul Watson had always made running a restaurant feel less like a business venture and more like a jolly jape.”
The Guardian: The 20 best places to eat in Britain this summer
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘jape’.
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Of Imitative Origin
Words formed in imitation of the sound of the things they signify.
bawl, biff, blizzard, blob, blooper, bob, boff, bomb, bonkers, boo, borborygmus, brouhaha and 148 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
bilby "The word fuck is first found in a dictionary in 1598, when it was one of five synonyms given to translate the Italian word fottere (the others were jape, sard, swive, and occupy)."
- Jesse Sheidlower, Can a Woman "Prong" a Man?, slate.com, 1 Oct 2009. Oct 6, 2009
bilby ROTCL. Jul 3, 2008
taciturnyetprolix Well, I hear some of the furniture is naked, and that's always funny. Jul 3, 2008
bilby There's a big furniture store in Darwin, Australia, named Jape. Uproarious lounges?
Nov 21, 2007
ulleskelf Hilarity unconfined! Oct 12, 2007