Other forms: japes
A jape is a practical joke or a bit of mockery. A merry jape, only a jape, japes and tricks.
It is archaic and survives mostly as deliberate period flavour, in historical fiction and in jokes about it. Chaucer used it, and it then went out of respectable use for centuries because of a coarse secondary meaning it once carried.
1nounjapeA practical joke or a bit of mockery.
“The students' latest jape was putting the headmaster's car on the school roof.”
jape is a joke.
Middle English japen, of uncertain origin. It fell out of use for centuries because of a coarse secondary sense.
Middle English
japen — to deceive, play tricks on; act foolishly, joke; have sex with
English, today
jape
Built from
From Middle English japen (“to deceive, play tricks on; act foolishly, joke; have sex with”), of uncertain origin, but perhaps combining Old French - japper (“to bark, howl, scream; chatter, gossip”) with gaber (“to mock, deride”). See also gab, Old Occitan japar, jaupar (“to bark, yelp, yap”), related to Old Saxon galpōn (“to cry loudly, make a noise, brag”) (Low German galpen (“to bark, howl, scream”)), Middle High German gelpfen (“to scream, bark, boast, proclaim”), Old Norse gjálpa (“to yelp”) (dialectal Swedish galpa (“to cry, screech”)). More at yelp, yawp, yap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA