a. (Frequently in plural) stripes or markings resembling those of a zebra; spec. dark and light stripes applied to a road surface to indicate a pedestrian crossing (cf. zebra crossingn.)b. the action or practice of marking something with stripes.
1854
The G. gerardiana is a variety of the other without its zebra markings.
Florist & Hort. Journal (Philadelphia) vol. 3 292
1901
Only in two cases did the foal of the stallion sire by the previously crossed zebra dam show any signs of a zebra-marking.
G. P. Mudge, Textbook Zoology xxiii. 370
1949
Investigations by the Road Research Laboratory..have led to the full-scale trials of the striped (zebra) markings for pedestrian crossings.
Surveyor 8 July 407/1
1955
Changes in pedestrian behavior as a result of zebra marking.
Journal Operations Research Society of Amer.vol. 3 292 (heading)
2015
Traffic wardens..guide pedestrians to cross the roads at designated zebra markings only.
zebra marking typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zebra marking 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 zebra marking, n., 1860–2010
* 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
1860
0.0008
1870
0.0012
1880
0.0013
1890
0.0013
1900
0.0016
1910
0.0018
1920
0.0019
1930
0.0019
1940
0.0018
1950
0.0017
1960
0.0016
1970
0.0014
1980
0.0014
1990
0.0014
2000
0.0013
2010
0.0012
Originally published as part of the entry for zebra, n.