Zep's Balloon Burns... Count Zeppelin's large, dirigible balloon, Zeppelin VI, took fire today following an explosion and burned.
Beatrice (Nebraska) Daily Sun 15 September 1/4]
1914
Do you really think any of the ‘Zepps’ will ever reach London? I don't, for one, for there are searchlights and guns at different intervals along the coast.
Indiana (Pennsylvania) Evening Gazette 23 November 2/3
1916
The night those Zeps bombarded town.
J. Pope, Simple Rhymes 40
1916
A hostile raiding ‘Zepp.’
Times Literary Supplement 27 January 40/3
1931
The most interesting feature of our trip was a personally escorted tour of the entire Zep whilst crossing over France.
Flight 28 August 855/1
1993
We seed one Zepp, agen Birnigum, a big silver hull of a ‘boat’ in the moonlight.
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
Forms
Variant forms
1.
1900s–
Zep, Zepp
2. Also with lower-case initial.
Frequency
Zepp typically occurs about 0.03 times per million words in modern written English.
Zepp 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 Zepp, n., 1910–2010
* 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
1910
0.031
1920
0.028
1930
0.026
1940
0.025
1950
0.024
1960
0.026
1970
0.025
1980
0.028
1990
0.029
2000
0.032
2010
0.036
Compounds & derived words
1914–
General attributive (in sense 1), esp. in Zepp raid.
1914
London's growing apprehension of a Zep raid ought to open up a good market for Kansas' banner crop of cyclone cellars.
Washington Post 7 December 6/3
1915
The spot where a Zep. Bomb fell in a cross-roads.
W. Owen, Letter 12 June (1967) 338
1916
We had a lovely Zepp raid the other night.
R. Mountfort, Letter 5 September in Great War Letters (2009) 109
1919
We're exceedingly preoccupied with the war—Zepp. raids and things.
C. Orr, Glorious Thing ii. 20
1986
‘No zepp attacks,’ Blanche said, a note of disappointment in her voice.
B. Carter, Jack xxxiv. 295
2002
Ever since that night when she'd been in London during the Zepp raid she'd not been herself.