<zoo-comb. form + flagellaten., after scientific LatinZooflagellata, plural noun (1908 or earlier) and its probable model GermanZooflagellaten, plural noun (1903 or earlier).
Meaning & use
Biology.
noun
1911–
A flagellate (protist) belonging to any of several groups of unicellular organisms whose members possess one or more flagella, lack chromatophores, and do not carry out photosynthesis; an animal-like flagellate. Cf. phytoflagellaten.
The term Zooflagellata has sometimes been used as a class name (e.g. by P.-P. Grassé Traité de zool. (1952) vol. I. 574), but zooflagellates are now rarely treated as a coherent taxonomic group.
1911
The Nannoplankton is composed of bacteria, protophytes.., and protozoa (rhizopods and zoöflagellates).
Knowledge August 321/
1940
Few zooflagellates..were observed by us.
Transactions of American Philosophical Societyvol. 31 182
1978
The motley assembly of entirely non-photosynthetic flagellates known as the zooflagellates are considered to be derivative of photosynthetic forms and do not appear to be monophyletic.
Bio Syst.vol. 10 76/2
2009
Trypanosoma gambiense..is the zooflagellate that causes African sleeping sickness.
G. I. Edwards & C. Pfirrmann, E-Z Biology (ed. 4) 147
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
zooflagellate typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zooflagellate 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 zooflagellate, n. & adj., 1930–2010
* 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
1930
0.0046
1940
0.0057
1950
0.0072
1960
0.0074
1970
0.008
1980
0.0084
1990
0.0096
2000
0.0088
2010
0.0084
zooflagellate, n. & adj. was revised in June 2017.
zooflagellate, n. & adj. was last modified in July 2023.