zipless, adj.

zipless
http://www.oed.com/dictionary/zipless_adj%3Ftab%3Dmeaning_and_use
Revised 2021

# ziplessadjective

## Earlier version

- zipless, a. in OED Second Edition (1989)

## Factsheet

### What does the adjective zipless mean?

There are three meanings listed in OED's entry for the adjective zipless. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

### How common is the adjective zipless?

Fewer than 0.01occurrences per million words in modern written English

1920 | 0.00006
1930 | 0.0001
1940 | 0.0008
1950 | 0.0019
1960 | 0.0029
1970 | 0.0041
1980 | 0.0053
1990 | 0.0061
2000 | 0.0073
2010 | 0.0079

### How is the adjective zipless pronounced?

#### British English

/ˈzɪplᵻs/
ZIP-luhss

#### U.S. English

/ˈzɪplᵻs/
ZIP-luhss

### Where does the adjective zipless come from?

Earliest known use

1920s

The earliest known use of the adjective zipless is in the 1920s.

OED's earliest evidence for zipless is from 1922, in Mining Congr. Journal.

zipless is formed within English, by derivation.

Etymons: zip n.1, ‑less suffix.

### Nearby entries

1. zip cuff, n. 1995–
2. zip cuff, v. 1996–
3. Zipf, n. 1936–
4. zip fastener, n. 1925–
5. zip fastening, n. & adj. 1925–
6. zip gun, n. 1914–
7. Ziph, n. 1834–
8. ziphian, n. & adj. 1896
9. ziphiiform, adj. 1891
10. ziphioid, adj. & n. 1861–
11. zipless, adj.1922–
12. zip line, n. 1970–
13. zip line, v. 1998–
14. zipliner, n. 1993–
15. zip lining, n.?1983–
16. zip-lipped, adj. 1943–
17. ziplock, n. 1928–
18. zipped, adj. 1931–
19. zippeite, n. 1850–
20. zipper, n. 1923–
21. zipper, v. 1927–

## Etymology

### Summary

Formed within English, by derivation.
< zip n.1 + ‑less suffix.

## Meaning & use

1. 1.
   1922–
   colloquial (originally U.S.). Lacking energy, vigour, or liveliness. Cf. zip n.1 B.1b.
   1. 1922

      > It looks as though there is going to be a lot of that zipless campaigning in the sweet bye and bye.

      Mining Congr. Journal May 716/2
   2. 1981

      > The zipless droning began to agitate and other ALP members pointed out that Government members did not look exactly galvanised and inspired by their leader's words.

      Canberra Times 13 May 18/5
   3. 2004

      > Matthew Broderick repeats his Leo Bloom shtick..in the Roundabout's zipless revival of a silly 1983 comedy by Larry Shue.

      Time Out New York 30 December 138/1
   U.S. English colloquial and slang
   1. dead Old English–
      Without energy, vitality, purpose, or dynamic or interesting qualities; lacking variety, dull.
   2. lifeless Old English–
      In extended use: (originally) †lacking a vital spark, containing no (physical or spiritual) sustenance or nourishment (obsolete); (later in…
   3. unquick c1475–
      Not lively, active, or quick-witted.
   4. exanimate?c1550–
      Deprived or destitute of animation or courage; spiritless.
   5. dead-alive 1563–
      Seemingly both dead and alive; dull, inactive; lacking in life, spirit, or animation. Cf. dead-and-alive, adj.
   6. dead-living 1576–1606
      Seemingly both dead and living; dull, inactive; cf. dead-alive, adj.
   7. flat 1604–
      Wanting in energy and spirit; lifeless, dull. Also, out of spirits, low, dejected, depressed.
   8. dead-live 1605
      Seemingly both dead and alive; dull, inactive; cf. dead-alive, adj.
   9. unsprighty 1607
      Not sprightly or lively.
   10. spiritless 1609–
       Lacking dynamic qualities; characterized by the absence of animation, energy, or zest. Of a person, or his or her behaviour, speech, etc.
   11. fireless 1647–
       figurative. Without energy, life, or animation.
   12. uninformed 1709–
       Not animated, enlivened, or inspired.
   13. inanimate 1713–
       Without the activity or motion of life (literal and figurative); spiritless, inactive, dull.
   14. dispirited a1725
       Deprived of its essential quality or vigour; destitute of spirit or animation, spiritless. Obsolete.
   15. unanimated 1734–
       Dull, inanimate; not enlivened.
   16. nerveless 1735–
       Of an action, condition, etc.: characterized by lack of vigour or energy.
   17. inanimated 1753–88
       = inanimate, adj. A.2.
   18. dead-and-alive 1819–
       Seemingly both dead and alive; (esp. of a place) dull, lacking in life, spirit, or animation. Cf. dead-alive, adj.
   19. sticky 1843–81
       colloquial. Of a person: wanting in animation or grace; stiff, wooden. Cf. sticky, adj.² 6b. Obsolete.
   20. unalive 1905–
       Lacking in vitality; not living. Also figurative.
   21. pepless 1909–
       Lacking energy, vigour, or spirit.
   22. zipless 1922–
       colloquial (originally U.S.). Lacking energy, vigour, or liveliness. Cf. zip, n.¹ B.1b.
   23. soggy 1928–
       Of things, in various transferred and figurative uses: dull, lifeless, lacking in vigour, sluggish; (of steering) unresponsive.
   24. undead 1936–
       Not dead; alive. Also, not quite dead but not fully alive, dead-and-alive. In vampirism, clinically dead but not yet at rest. Also absol. as n.
   View in Historical Thesaurus
2. 1. 2.a.
      1942–
      Of an item of clothing, bag, etc.: having no zip fastener; lacking a zip or zips.
      1. 1942

         > We get war fashions, born of emergencies—straight, trim skirts, cotton shirts and blouses, malleable, zipless handbags.

         Country Life 17 April 774/3
      2. 1987

         > Most of them were wearing the standard uniform of the Outback male..: ‘stubbies’..are green, tight-fitting, zipless shorts.

         B. Chatwin, Songlines (1988) viii. 34
      3. 2020

         > These dresses need to have holiday spirit... Relaxed, wrappy, zipless and lining free is the way to go.

         Daily Mail (Nexis) 15 June
   2. 2.b.
      1973–
      Designating a brief, uncomplicated, and passionate sexual encounter.
      Originally and chiefly in zipless fuck (coarse slang), a phrase coined by Erica Jong in her novel Fear of Flying (see quot. 1973).
      1. 1973

         > My response..was..to evolve my fantasy of the Zipless Fuck... Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like petals.

         E. Jong, Fear of Flying i. 11
      2. 1978

         > Girls who feared flying tended to race blindly through zipless fucks.

         G. Vidal, Kalki iii. 79
      3. 1984

         > This small hand I'm shaking..launched a thousand zipless erotic encounters for her heroine.

         Times 2 November 11/1
      4. 2001

         > You can't go on the rebound with your ex-girlfriend. It defeats the objects of the exercise. You need a good old zipless fuck.

         F. North, Fen iii. 22
      1. exclusive 1798–
         Of a romantic or sexual relationship (esp. in early use, of a marriage): monogamous; involving partners who are committed solely to one another…
      2. syndyasmian 1877–
         Pertaining to or marked by sexual union without exclusive coition or with temporary cohabitation.
      3. non-monogamous 1895–
         Not practising or characterized by monogamy. In later use esp.: of or relating to romantic or sexual relationships not limited to an exclusive…
      4. casual 1971–
         Of a sexual relationship or (an instance of) sexual activity: conducted by individuals who are not regular or established sexual partners. Also…
      5. zipless 1973–
         Designating a brief, uncomplicated, and passionate sexual encounter. Originally and chiefly in zipless fuck (coarse slang), a phrase coined by Erica Jong in her novel Fear of Flying (see quot. 1973).
      6. monogamous 1987–
         Of a person: practising monogamy; esp. having or permitted to have only one living spouse at one time. Now also (in extended use): remaining…
      7. polyamorous 1990–
         Practising, advocating, or characterized by polyamory.
      8. poly 1992–
         = polyamorous, adj.
      View in Historical Thesaurus

## Pronunciation

### British English

/ˈzɪplᵻs/
ZIP-luhss

### U.S. English

/ˈzɪplᵻs/
ZIP-luhss

####

##### Consonants

- ppea
- ttea
- kkey
- bbuy
- ddye
- ɡguy
- tʃchore
- dʒjay
- ffore
- θthaw
- ssore
- ʃshore
- vvee
- ðthee
- zzee
- ʒbeige
- xloch
- hhay
- llay
- ɬrhingyll
- rray
- wway
- jyore
- mmay
- nnay
- ŋsing

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.

View the pronunciation model here.

####

##### Consonants

- ppea
- ttea
- kkey
- bbuy
- ddye*
- ɡguy
- tʃchore
- dʒjay
- ffore
- θthaw
- ssore
- ʃshore
- vvee
- ðthee
- zzee
- ʒbeige
- xloch
- hhay
- llay
- rray
- wway
- jyore
- mmay
- nnay
- ŋsing

* /d/ also represents a 'tapped' /t/ as in

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.

View the pronunciation model here.

####

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

zipless typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.

zipless 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 zipless, adj., 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 | 0.00006
1930 | 0.0001
1940 | 0.0008
1950 | 0.0019
1960 | 0.0029
1970 | 0.0041
1980 | 0.0053
1990 | 0.0061
2000 | 0.0073
2010 | 0.0079

zipless, adj. was revised in March 2021.

zipless, adj. was last modified in July 2023.