<Afrikaanszef (a1982 or earlier as noun, 1984 or earlier as adjective), respelling of zeph- (in Ford Zephyr, the name of a car popular with white working-class South Africans…
<Afrikaanszef (a1982 or earlier as noun, 1984 or earlier as adjective), respelling of zeph- (in Ford Zephyr, the name of a car popular with white working-class South Africans).
Notes
Compare the following quot., which suggests currency of the Afrikaans noun in the 1950s (the Ford Zephyr was first produced in 1950):
1982
A fool, country bumpkin or yokel had a variety of titles in ‘isicamtho’ too: vossie, mogo, skappie, barrie, zeff, battersby, mommish zow or zao.
Originally (depreciative): typical of, or associated with, working-class white (esp. Afrikaans-speaking) people of relatively low social status; common; trashy. Now frequently: designating a style of music, dress, or youth culture ironically, knowingly, or ostentatiously appropriating aspects of this. Also as n.: this music or the dress and lifestyle associated with it.
1990
Now I'm writing English with an Afrikaans name. I chose Koos Kombuis because I wanted a name that was as zeph as possible; something academics and purists would never accept.
Style (South Africa) July 81
2010
Afrikaans rap-tinged Euro-dance has a name, and its name is Zef.
Guardian (Online edition) (Nexis) 5 February
2010
If you are holding a glass of brandy and coke, you are probably zef. If you have mounted a spoiler on your 1989 Mazda, you are very zef indeed.
Argus Weekend (South Africa) (Nexis) 14 March 8
2014
Zef..refers to the lower-middle class counterculture of South Africa... ‘Zef is, you're poor but you're fancy. You're poor but you're sexy, you've got style.’
Cape Times in iol.co.za South Africa 26 May (online newspaper, accessed 18 Dec. 2014)
2016
Die Antwoord blends three languages into its music (English, Afrikaans and Xhosa) and promotes the ‘zef’ culture of being stylish and sexy in spite of monetary and social status in its music.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but /ˈpɛdl̩i/.
Vowels
ifleece, happy
ɪkit
ɛdress
ætrap, bath
ɑlot, palm, cloth, thought
ɑrstart
ɔcloth, thought
ɔrnorth, force
ʊfoot
ugoose
əstrut, comma
ərnurse, letter
ɪ(ə)rnear
ɛ(ə)rsquare
ʊ(ə)rcure
eɪface
aɪpride
aʊmouth
oʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ɑ̃gratin
æ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Afrikaans uses a sound similar to /t/ and /k/ but made in the same part of the mouth as /j/, which may appear in some speakers’ pronunciations in English, but the OED reflects their common anglicized forms of /tʃ/ or /k/. Similarly, African click sounds are shown as their common anglicized forms, highly variable but often as /g/, /k/ and/or /h/.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used as in British and US English.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
edress
ætrap
ʌstrut
ɒlot, cloth
ɔːthought, north, force
ʊfoot
uːgoose
ɑːbath, palm, start
ɜːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
aɪpride
eɪface
ɔɪvoice
əletter
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
The symbols used for several of the South African vowels are less precise than their use in other varieties. For example, in some words the /ɪ/ vowel will sound closer to /ə/ whilst still being in a stressed syllable. Some vowels reflected as /ɒ/ may sound similar to /ɔː/ but significantly shorter. Some vowels transcribed as /e/ may sound longer, or some transcribed as /eɪ/ sound more steady (a sound like /eː/). In some words, /ʌ/ and /æ/ may also sound very similar to each other.
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.
Consonants
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values
gguy
jjay
yyore
chchore
khloch
shshore
ththaw
dhthee
zhbeige
Vowels
atrap
ahpalm
airsquare
arstart
arrcarry (British only)
awthought
ayface
a(ng)gratin
edress
eefleece
eerdeer
errmerry
ikit
ighpride
irrmirror
olot (British only)
ohgoat
oogoose
oorcure
orforce
orrsorry (British only)
owmouth
oyvoice
o(ng)salon
ustrut
uhletter
urnurse
urrhurry
uufoot
Forms
Variant forms
1900s–
zeph
2000s–
zef, zeff
Frequency
zef typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zef is in frequency band 2, which contains words occurring between 0.001 and 0.01 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zef, adj., 1990–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.