jasper

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒæs.pɚ/; enPR: jăsʹpər
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdʒæs.pə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

From Middle English jasper, jaspre, from Old French jaspre, a variant of jaspe (modern French jaspe), from Latin iaspis, from Ancient Greek ἴασπις (íaspis).

jasper (countable and uncountable, plural jaspers)

1. (obsolete) Any bright-coloured kind of chalcedony apart from cornelian.
2. An opaque, impure variety of quartz, of red, yellow, and other dull colors, breaking conchoidally with a smooth surface.
3. Jasperware pottery.

• jasperware

jasper (third-person singular simple present jaspers, present participle jaspering, simple past and past participle jaspered)

1. (transitive) To decorate with, or as if with, jasper.

From the male personal name Jasper.

jasper (plural jaspers)

1. (UK, West Country, Somerset, colloquial) A wasp.
2. (US, slang) A person, a guy, especially seen as naïve or simple.
   • 1957, Meredith Willson, “Ya Got Trouble”, in The Music Man:

     And list'nin to some big out-a-town jasper / Hearin' him tell about horse-race gamblin' / Not a wholesome trottin' race, no!

   • 1968, Charles Portis, “True Grit”, in The Saturday Evening Post:

     "I stood there through almost an hour of it before they called Rooster Cogburn to the stand. I had guessed wrong as to which one he was, picking out a younger and slighter man with a badge on his shirt. And I was surprised when an old one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland went up and was sworn."

   • 1975, “Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)”, in Nighthawks at the Diner, performed by Tom Waits:

     Standing on the corner like a just-got-in-town jasper

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, “The Light over the Ranges”, in Against the Day, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, →ISBN, page 110:

     “That jasper,” sniggered Darby, “never pulled out his ‘dummy’ for nothing but pissing, I bet you!”

3. (Appalachia) A stranger.

• japers

• IPA^(key): /ʒas.pe/

• Audio

  (file)

jasper

1. apply different colors of paint flowing together in order to make it look like jasper stone

   Jasper la tranche d’un livre.

   (please add an English translation of this usage example)

• “jasper”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.