A pedestrian crossing marked by broad light and dark stripes running parallel to the kerb from one side of a road to the other, at which (in most countries) vehicles must stop if a person wishes to cross.
1934
Excellent though Hore-Belisha beacons and studs and zebra crossings are, their partial adoption will add to the danger of the streets.
Hansard Commons 14 November 1956
1950
The initial values of the percentage of drivers giving way are higher on the ‘zebra’ crossings than on the plain.
Surveyor 23 June 365/2
1977
He..called out angrily after a car which had failed to stop at a zebra crossing.
B. Pym, Quartet in Autumn ii. 23
2017
The group was on a zebra crossing but the cabbie had failed to give way.
zebra crossing typically occurs about 0.02 times per million words in modern written English.
zebra crossing 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 zebra crossing, n., 1950–2010
* 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.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1950
0.012
1960
0.014
1970
0.015
1980
0.017
1990
0.018
2000
0.02
2010
0.021
Frequency of zebra crossing, n., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
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 corpus.
Period
Frequency per million words
2017
0.063
2018
0.057
2019
0.051
2020
0.047
2021
0.047
2022
0.048
2023
0.05
2024
0.057
Originally published as part of the entry for zebra, n.