With sense 3 compare zoophilousadj. 2 and the foreign-language parallels cited at that entry.
Meaning & use
1.
1884–
Relating to or characterized by emotional attachment to, or love of, animals; animal-loving. Cf. zoophilian. 1.
1884
I hold that it is zoophilic when you can make machinery do the work of poor beasts of burden and of traction.
American Reg. 5 July (London edition) 5/2
1947
Our chief concern, however, is with the dog as a beast of burden. In England, presumably owing to the prevalence of zoophilic organisations such as the R.S.P.C.A. such practices are illegalised.
New Biology 152
1998
A zoophilic compassion for all animals.
S. H. Webb, God & Dogs v. 109
2000
Given the zoophilic tendencies of Britain's younger poets..it is interesting to find that Polly Clark..was, at one time, a zookeeper.
slang (chiefly British). derogatory. Designating a man who (it is suggested) engages in sexual intercourse with sheep. Usually as a term of abuse: designating a man from a rural region…
Biology. Of a parasitic organism: that prefers to feed, live, or grow on animals rather than humans; having an animal rather than a human host. Also: of, relating to, or characteristic of such organisms. Contrasted with anthropophilicadj.
1922
Anopheles are perhaps not so much misanthropic and zoophilic as thermotropic.
Tropical Dis. Bulletinvol. 19 857
1937
With ‘stabulation’ there come the optimum conditions for the ‘deviation’ of any species of zoophilic habits, and if these zoophilic forms alone are present, as is the case over a large part of Europe, malaria disappears.
British Medical Journal 3 April 715/2
1961
The Formosan strain of S[chistosoma]japonicum develops for a short period in the viscera of man, but does not reach maturity there and must be regarded as a non-human, zoophilic strain.
Journal of Parasitologyvol. 47 891/1
2015
Fungi coming from animal sources (zoophilic fungi) induce a more intense inflammation than those spread from person to person.
R. B. Weller et al., Clinical Dermatology (ed. 5) ix. 240/2
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.
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
zoophilic typically occurs about 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zoophilic is in frequency band 3, which contains words occurring between 0.01 and 0.1 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 zoophilic, adj., 1900–2010
* 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.