The genetic relationship of twins, triplets, etc., in respect of their being either monozygotic or dizygotic.
1952
Instead of exchanging skin between the twin animals whose zygosity it is desired to establish, grafts are being transplanted from both of them to a third, unrelated recipient.
New Biologyvol. 12 42
1971
Before recent developments with marker genes, it was not possible to assign with certainty the zygosity of a substantial proportion of twin pairs.
Nature 23 July 277/1
1978
The type of twinning and determination of zygosity are given attention.
The degree of genetic similarity between alleles which determines whether an individual is homozygotic or heterozygotic for the characteristic expressed.
1967
Relationship between Rh0(D) zygosity and red cell Rh0(D) antigen content in family members.
Journal of Clinical Investigationvol. 46 681 (heading)
1967
The members of two families showed a poor correspondence between antibody binding and zygosity.
Journal of Clinical Investigationvol. 46 681
1972
Efforts have been made to determine HL-A zygosity of unrelated subjects by use of the gene-dose effect.
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.
zygosity typically occurs about 0.05 times per million words in modern written English.
zygosity 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 zygosity, 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
0.05
1960
0.049
1970
0.047
1980
0.046
1990
0.051
2000
0.05
2010
0.045
Frequency of zygosity, 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
2018
0.0005
2019
0.001
2020
0.0029
2021
0.0037
2022
0.0051
2023
0.0058
2024
0.0068
zygosity, n. was first published in 1986; not fully revised.