zephyr-like typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zephyr-like 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 zephyr-like, adv. & adj., 1790–2010
* 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
1790
0.001
1800
0.0011
1810
0.002
1820
0.0025
1830
0.0028
1840
0.0035
1850
0.004
1860
0.0044
1870
0.0048
1880
0.0045
1890
0.0041
1900
0.0039
1910
0.0035
1920
0.003
1930
0.0027
1940
0.0022
1950
0.0016
1960
0.0013
1970
0.001
1980
0.0008
1990
0.0008
2000
0.0008
2010
0.0008
Originally published as part of the entry for zephyr, n.
zephyr-like, adv. & adj. was first published in 2017.