Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from Turkish. Partly a borrowing from Arabic.
Etymons:Turkishzaim; Arabiczaʿīm.
<Turkishzaim, <Arabiczaʿīm chieftain; in sense b, directly from the Arabic (= spokesman, leader, ringleader).
Meaning & use
a.
1807–
Formerly, in the feudal system of Turkey, a chief who supported a mounted militia bearing his name. Cf. timariotn.Historical.
1807
Each of the feudal lords, whether zaïms or timariots, were enjoined by the charter by which they held their estates, to proceed to war.
T. Thornton, Present State of Turkey v. 165
a1823
These Beys have the command over all the individuals in a certain district, who hold lands on the same tenure; the latter are called sipáhís or soldiers (seapoys), and in our books zaïms and timariots, from the different sort of estates which they hold in fee.
Encyclopædia Metropolitana (1845) vol. XV. 509/2
1913
The Zaims and Timariotes..were a class of country gentlemen.
In Lebanon, a popular leader or influential figure.
1975
A characteristically Lebanese political institution, that of the zaim (leader) and his network of co-religionist clients.
New Society 23 October 207/2
1983
When revolution came, it was..from the strongholds of the political godfathers—the zaʿims—Christian and Muslim, who ran the country as an extension of their personal fiefdoms.
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.
zaim typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zaim 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 zaim, n., 1800–2010
* 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
1800
0.0093
1810
0.0078
1820
0.0068
1830
0.0059
1840
0.0048
1850
0.0046
1860
0.0023
1870
0.0014
1880
0.0013
1890
0.0013
1900
0.0013
1910
0.0012
1920
0.0013
1930
0.0017
1940
0.0016
1950
0.0021
1960
0.0026
1970
0.0031
1980
0.0036
1990
0.0038
2000
0.004
2010
0.0044
zaim, n. was first published in 1993; not fully revised.