The striped larva of a North American noctuid moth, Melanchra picta, which is sometimes a pest of cultivated vegetables.
1841
Dr. Melsheimer calls it the zebra-caterpillar, on account of its stripes.
T. W. Harris, Report on Insects of Massachusetts 328
1901
The yellow Zebra caterpillar, conspicuously striped lengthwise with black, is commonly known on cabbage and other vegetables.
M. C. Dickerson, Moths & Butterfliesiii. 254
2005
The Zebra Caterpillar is occasionally reported as a pest on field crops and in gardens.
D. L. Wagner, Caterpillars Eastern North Amer. 414
Frequency
zebra caterpillar typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zebra caterpillar 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 zebra caterpillar, n., 1860–2010
* 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
1860
0.0009
1870
0.0012
1880
0.0017
1890
0.0018
1900
0.0017
1910
0.0018
1920
0.0017
1930
0.0017
1940
0.0014
1950
0.0008
1960
0.0006
1970
0.0005
1980
0.0004
1990
0.0004
2000
0.0004
2010
0.0004
Originally published as part of the entry for zebra, n.