A form of star connection of three-phase circuits, each branch of which is interconnected and contains portions of two consecutive phases.
1922
This affects the magnetising current and may result in an appreciable increase in iron loss owing to flux distortion, and to minimize this effect zig-zag connections are sometimes adopted.
P. Kemp, Alternating Current Electrical Engineering (ed. 2) xiii. 188
1947
Unbalanced direct current in the half-wave rectifiers requires larger transformers than in the full-wave rectifiers. This is partly overcome in three-phase transformers by the use of zigzag connections.
R. Lee, Electronic Transformers & Circuits iii. 47
zigzag connection typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zigzag connection 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 zigzag connection, n., 1920–2010
* 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
1920
0.0057
1930
0.0047
1940
0.004
1950
0.0035
1960
0.0036
1970
0.0025
1980
0.0016
1990
0.0007
2000
0.0007
2010
0.0007
Originally published as part of the entry for zigzag, n., adj., & adv.
zigzag, n., adj., & adv. was first published in 1921; not fully revised.