Having or characterized by pimples or facial acne (frequently with connotations of youth or callowness).
Stressed as ˈzitty.
1971
Here they were, on second ave jamming in their own zitty way.
East Village Other 23 March 14
1979
As the beer ran down her body, so did her make-up, revealing a zitty pale complexion.
Stoutonia (University Wisconsin–Stout) 30 August 4
1985
Is there something lacking in women that they so rarely find zitty, wet-behind-the-ears, awkward, uncertain, tongue-tied, provincial kids less than interesting?
Syracuse (New York) Herald-Amer. 16 June l2/1
2002
A time machine that works. A device that can transport us from one age to another..do you know what this means? we can skip the zitty teenage years!!
zitty typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zitty 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 zitty, adj., 1970–2010
* 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
1970
0.0009
1980
0.0011
1990
0.0011
2000
0.0011
2010
0.0014
Originally published as part of the entry for zit, n.