Other forms: jaspers
Jasper is an opaque stone, usually red or brown. A jasper bead, polished jasper, red jasper.
It is a form of quartz coloured by iron and other impurities, and the patterns are what make it prized — picture jasper looks like a landscape. It is opaque where most quartz is clear, which is the defining difference. Note that the word came through Latin and Greek from a Semitic source.
1nounjasperAn opaque stone, usually red or brown.
“The ring was set with a polished piece of red jasper.”
jasper is a stone.
Greek iaspis comes from a Semitic word for the stone. The word travelled westward with the trade.
Ancient Greek
ἴασπις
Latin
iaspis
Old French
jaspre
Middle English
jasper
English, today
jasper
From Middle English jasper, jaspre, from Old French jaspre, a variant of jaspe (modern French jaspe), from Latin iaspis, from Ancient Greek ἴασπις.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Rocks & Minerals