a. A person, technique, etc., that kills or does away with something.b. spec. Any of various devices for destroying or warding off pests; also (properly with capital initial), a proprietary name in the U.S. for an agricultural machine of this kind.
1969
The United States colonel who formerly commanded them.. is now busy evolving a ‘zapper’ technique for scything down nippa palm groves where Vietcong are reported to be hiding with direct fire artillery.
Guardian 27 May 8/5
1970
The rat zapper does not work on Saturdays or Sundays, but there were still no rats to be seen there yesterday.
Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 14 December 3/3
1973
One particularly promising application, making use of small portable zappers, is for greenhouses and other horticultural enterprises where the cost of soil preparation per acre is not an important consideration. For row crops..the self-propelled Zapper is presently economic only when chemical weed-control costs are higher than $15 per acre.
Scientific American September 74/2
1975
Zapper. For agricultural machine which employs microwaves to control vegetation and vegetation damaging pests.
Official Gazette (U.S. Patent Office) 25 March tm271/2
1976
The general message is that although various alternatives are promising, there is no magic ‘insect zapper’, as Kennedy put it, to replace chemical poisons in the near future.
Nature 12 February 441/1
1977
How many bugs do zappers zap?
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 30 July 4/1
1983
1 acre bug zapper. $59·97. 35 watt ultraviolet fluorescent bulb has an effective range up to 1 acre for outdoor comfort.
Monitor (McAllen, Texas) 23 June 10c(advertisement)
The remote-control unit for a piece of electronic equipment, esp. a television or video recorder. Cf. zapv. II.8. slang (originally U.S.).
1984
The machine can automatically activate a switching device that does anything from switch the channel to turn off the TV... It may be a year before his hybrid zapper is on the market.
Adweek (U.S.) 30 January (Eastern edition) 50/2
1987
Hit the zapper, Maude. Maybe there's some bowling on another channel.
Los Angeles Times 5 February iii. 10/1
1990
BSB comes onto the screen when you select it, using just the one remote zapper.
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.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but /ˈpɛdl̩i/.
Vowels
ifleece, happy
ɪkit
ɛdress
ætrap, bath
ɑlot, palm, cloth, thought
ɑrstart
ɔcloth, thought
ɔrnorth, force
ʊfoot
ugoose
əstrut, comma
ərnurse, letter
ɪ(ə)rnear
ɛ(ə)rsquare
ʊ(ə)rcure
eɪface
aɪpride
aʊmouth
oʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ɑ̃gratin
æ̃salon
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.
Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.
Consonants
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values
gguy
jjay
yyore
chchore
khloch
shshore
ththaw
dhthee
zhbeige
Vowels
atrap
ahpalm
airsquare
arstart
arrcarry (British only)
awthought
ayface
a(ng)gratin
edress
eefleece
eerdeer
errmerry
ikit
ighpride
irrmirror
olot (British only)
ohgoat
oogoose
oorcure
orforce
orrsorry (British only)
owmouth
oyvoice
o(ng)salon
ustrut
uhletter
urnurse
urrhurry
uufoot
Frequency
zapper typically occurs about 0.03 times per million words in modern written English.
zapper 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 zapper, n., 1960–2010
* 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
1960
0.016
1970
0.022
1980
0.025
1990
0.025
2000
0.03
2010
0.037
Frequency of zapper, 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.