a. n. 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;b. adj. that opens or closes by means of a zip.
1925
Junior fashions..featured the introduction of the Zip fastening in little children's snow suits last winter.
Washington C.H. (Ohio) Herald 23 April 5/7
1926
Rip-open or ‘zip’ fastening bags have not been much liked.
Times 25 August 13/6
1984
Zip fastening pockets enable the rider to gain quick access to bits and pieces.
Freewheeling (Australia) January 42/1
2000
A one-piece mattress is often preferred because the zip fastenings are not always comfortable to sleep on.
zip fastening typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zip fastening is in frequency band 1, which contains words occurring fewer than 0.001 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 fastening, 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
0.0005
1940
0.0006
1950
0.0006
1960
0.0005
1970
0.0007
1980
0.0008
1990
0.0008
2000
0.0009
2010
0.0009
Originally published as part of the entry for zip, int. & n.¹