The striped wood of any of various tropical trees and shrubs, esp. of the genera Connarus (family Connaraceae) and Microberlinia (family Fabaceae), which is commonly used to make veneers and furniture; (also) a tree producing such wood.
A beautiful Devonport of zebra-wood, with a plate-glass back.
R. S. Surtees, Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tourviii. xlii. 231
1871
Zebra-wood (Omphalobium Lambertii). A large tree, native of Guiana.
J. Smith, Domestic Botany 467
1921
Andaman marble or zebrawood, a handsome wood finely striped with alternate but irregular bands of grey and black.
W. Bullock, Timbers for Woodwork 67
1996
The name zebrawood..generally applies to certain members of the Leguminosae family: Microberlinia brazzavillensis, M. bisulcata, and Brachystegia fleuryana.
American Woodworker June 68/2
2007
This is not your average chain hotel: It's a dim oasis lined with zebrawood panelling.
Any of several trees of the genus Bauhinia (family Caesalpiniaceae (Leguminosae)), esp. the Asian B. variegata and the Australian B. hookeri (also mou…
zebrawood typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zebrawood 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 zebrawood, n., 1770–2010
* 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
1770
0.013
1780
0.01
1790
0.0094
1800
0.0083
1810
0.0019
1820
0.0023
1830
0.0024
1840
0.0025
1850
0.0032
1860
0.0028
1870
0.0028
1880
0.0022
1890
0.0021
1900
0.0033
1910
0.0043
1920
0.0045
1930
0.0052
1940
0.0058
1950
0.0065
1960
0.0069
1970
0.0064
1980
0.006
1990
0.006
2000
0.0057
2010
0.0057
Originally published as part of the entry for zebra, n.