zebra suit typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zebra suit is in frequency band 1, which contains words occurring fewer than 0.001 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 zebra suit, 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
0.0002
1900
0.0001
1910
0.0002
1920
0.0002
1930
0.0001
1940
0.0001
1950
0.0002
1960
0.0003
1970
0.0004
1980
0.0005
1990
0.0005
2000
0.0006
2010
0.0006
Originally published as part of the entry for zebra, n.