a compact, opaque, cryptocrystalline variety of quartz, usually colored red: often used in decorative carvings.
Also called jasper ware;. Also called cameo ware. a fine, hard stoneware introduced c1775 by Wedgwood, stained various colors by metallic oxides, with raised designs in white.
a city in NW Alabama.
a resort town in SW Alberta, in SW Canada, on the Athabasca River: headquarters for Jasper National Park.
a male given name, form of Caspar.
an opaque impure microcrystalline form of quartz, red, yellow, brown, or dark green in colour, used as a gemstone and for ornamental decoration
Also called: jasper ware. a dense hard stoneware, invented in 1775 by Wedgwood, capable of being stained throughout its substance with metallic oxides and used as background for applied classical decoration
1300–50; Middle English jaspe, jaspre < Middle French; Old French jaspe < Latin iaspis < Greek iáspis < Semitic; compare Arabic yashb
1895–1900, special use of proper name Jasper
Jasper is a hard, semiprecious stone that's usually red. One of your birthstones is jasper if you were born in the month of March. Jasper is a type of quartz that can be brown, yellow, or green, but is most often a mottled, brick red color. When geologists find jasper embedded in cracks of volcanic rocks, it looks dull and drab, but it's beautifully shiny after being polished. Jasper has been used in jewelry and decorative objects for thousands of years. The word jasper means "spotted or speckled stone," from a Greek root.
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Jasper Ridge is far too small to support its own resident puma population.
From Science Daily • Jun. 28, 2026
These fresher faces — Jasper Dolphin, Rachel Wolfson, Zach Holmes — prove brave and resilient when allowed to participate.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 26, 2026
Since his arrest in January, several of Silvey's works - Jasper Jones, Runt and Rhubarb - have been removed from teaching lists in schools in Western Australia and Victoria.
From BBC • May 5, 2026
But the destruction of forests means that woodland caribou are threatened or endangered, and the population in Jasper National Park is so small that it is heading toward extinction.
From Slate • Apr. 28, 2026
And then we looked round, and saw that Jasper had disappeared.
From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
