jarp

jarp

English

WOTD – 9 April 2023

Etymology

Two boys in Germany jarping Easter eggs (verb sense).

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”),[1] probably originally imitative of a splash.[2]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɑːp/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɑɹp/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)p

Noun

jarp (plural jarps)

1. (Cumbria, Ireland, Northumbria, Yorkshire, games) 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.
   • 2017, Linda Tubby, “Flower-power Paste Eggs”, in Cracked: Creative and Easy Ways to Cook with Eggs, London: Kyle Books, →ISBN:

     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 egg with one jarp, without breaking their own. Then everyone eats the eggs.

Translations

act of knocking one’s pace-egg 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

Finnish: pääsiäismunien yhteen napautus

Verb

jarp (third-person singular simple present jarps, present participle jarping, simple past and past participle jarped)

1. (transitive, Cumbria, Ireland, Northumbria, Yorkshire, games) 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.
   • 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 2128161, page 77:

     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 conqueror.

   • 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 House Books, published 2010, →ISBN, part 7 (Superstition and Tradition), page 481:

     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 had one end intact.

   • 1987, Sid Chaplin, “The Night of the News”, in Michael Chaplin and Rene Chaplin, editors, In Blackberry Time, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear: Bloodaxe Books, →ISBN, page 72:

     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.

Derived terms

• jarping (noun)

Translations

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

Finnish: napauttaa pääsiäismunia yhteen

References

1. “jarp, v.”, in Collins English Dictionary.
2. “jaup, v., n., adv.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, OCLC 57069714, reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, →OCLC.

Further reading

• egg tapping on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• James Blenkin (2003), “Shildon C20/mid – Word List”, in Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group‎, archived from the original on 2022-11-27.
• “Easter Sunday: Egg Jarping (Egg Tapping)”, in Woodlands Primary School‎, Tonbridge, Kent, c. 2006, archived from the original on 2006-04-15.