A fastening device for clothes, bags, and other items, consisting of two flexible strips with interlocking projections of metal or plastic which can be closed or opened by pulling a sliding tag along them; = zipn.1 B.2.
1925
1 Did anyone tell you that ‘ZIPPERS’ are not being made? 2 Did anyone tell you that the patent ZIP fastener would wear out?
Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) Times 24 January 2 (advertisement)
1973
He stumbled down the nearest alleyway..fumbling as he went for the zip-fastener on his fly.
A. Price, October Men vii. 95
2000
There are two roomy end pockets and a deep front compartment—all with tough alloy zip fasteners.
zip fastener typically occurs about 0.02 times per million words in modern written English.
zip fastener 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 zip fastener, n., 1920–2010
* 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
1920
0.018
1930
0.02
1940
0.02
1950
0.02
1960
0.022
1970
0.022
1980
0.02
1990
0.017
2000
0.015
2010
0.013
Originally published as part of the entry for zip, int. & n.¹