The name (formerly proprietary) for a variety of waterproofed leather used esp. for the uppers of climbing boots.
1899
Zug…222,699. Leather. W. & J. Martin, 63, Brunswick Street, Glasgow; Leather Merchants and Manufacturers.
Trade Marks Journal 6 September 1092
1899
W. &. J. Martin, tanners, curriers, and leather factors, Albion Leather Works... Sole makers of Zug leather. 63 Brunswick Street, Glasgow.
Shoe & Leather Trader (Glasgow) 7 December p. ii (advertisement)
1900
The firm made a speciality of ‘zug’ leather, a new production... The manufacture of ‘zug’ is an entirely new process. The leather..will not burn like ordinary leather, and the fibre cannot be destroyed even by boiling... In the process of manufacture, the gelatine of the hide becomes oxidised, and is rendered insoluble and repellant [sic] to water.
Shoe & Leather Trader (Glasgow) 12 April 819/1
1907
The leather for the uppers should be the best zug or chrome, soft and absolutely waterproof.
G. D. Abraham, Complete Mountaineer iii. 29
1929
Sports shoes, of pigskin, calf, crocodile, and zug.
Footwear Organiser July 37/2
1933
I would have soft, almost glove-like, zug or beaver leather for the uppers.
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.
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
Also with capital initial.
Frequency
zug typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zug 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 zug, n., 1890–2010
* 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
1890
0.0069
1900
0.0064
1910
0.0066
1920
0.0064
1930
0.0086
1940
0.0093
1950
0.0094
1960
0.0096
1970
0.0099
1980
0.0096
1990
0.01
2000
0.0071
2010
0.0065
zug, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.