Jarp

Quick meaning: Jarp is a noun meaning (transitive, Cumbria, Ireland, Northumberland, 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.

Meaning

(transitive, Cumbria, Ireland, Northumberland, 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.

More Meanings

1. (Cumbria, Ireland, Northumberland, 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.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• jarps
• jarping
• jarped

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include handegg, hand-egg, speel, padiddle, lerky, jibbing.

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