Town Planning. To divide (a city, land, etc.) into areas subject to particular planning restrictions; to designate (a specific area) for use or development in this manner. Occasionally intransitive. Also (U.S.) const. out, to forbid (the siting of an enterprise) in a given area. Originally U.S.
1916
The plan to zone the city and regulate the height of buildings.
New York Times 4 February 17/2
1919
The question of ‘zoning’ the metropolitan area, or separating the city into districts, in order that regulations may be applied to control the erection of shops and factories near residential sites, has recently been occupying the attention of the Melbourne City Council.
Argus (Melbourne) 28 August 6
1934
There is practically no area around London that is zoned in a reasonable manner.
W. H. Heath in E. Betham, House Building 1934–6 xviii. 180
1939
All the frontage of main streets was placed in business zones although..only a small fraction of areas so zoned can ever be used for that purpose.
H. M. Lewis, City Planning xvi. 169
1967
Planners..are concerned that a community will be thoughtfully zoned overall.
Boston Sunday Herald 26 March i. 9/4
1971
There is no guarantee that land zoned for housing will be released by the landowners.
P. Gresswell, Environment 267
1975
A law that would ‘zone out’ massage parlors from the Times Square area on the principle that their proliferation is not sound community planning.
New York Times 16 October 29/1
1976
When a municipality zones for industry and commerce for local tax benefits..it..must zone to permit adequate housing within the means of the employes involved in such uses.
National Observer (U.S.) 14 August 7/2
1977
At that time, which was before horse racing was zoned out of the city, the track was on Stony Island Avenue near 63rd Street.
intransitive. colloquial. to zone in: to head directly for something; to focus or concentrate especially on something. Chiefly with on, to. Cf. homev. 5a, honev.4
1958
We were all getting breakfast..and, bang, another one [sc. hurricane] zoned in.
Listener 18 September 416/2
1972
He could not hope to zone in even on the secondary target.
R. Crawford, Whip Handi. v. 25
1977
He talks about ‘zoning in’ on things.
New York Times 29 January 13
1990
Videos are also zoning in on hair color.
Savvy Woman May 52/1
2004
Zoning in to the jet-set lifestyle should leave you sneering about the boringness of the rich.
intransitive. U.S.slang. [Probably after zonedadj.] With out. To relax, to switch off, to detach oneself mentally from one's surroundings; (also) to lose concentration or consciousness, to fall asleep.
1970
It is time for me to go back to the solitude of my record player and listen to my four copies of Fun House... I can just lay there and zone out.
‘N. Stoogeling’ in J. Eisen, Twenty-minute Fandangos & Forever Changes (1971) 199
1982
The highlight of my week was to go..to Ranger games. It had nothing to do with my profession. I could just sit there and zone out.
New York Times 28 November v. 5/1
1989
I tried to start up a conversation with a woman on a nearby machine, but she appeared to have zoned out.
New York Woman November 84/2
1990
I'm bushed. I'm beat. I need an hour or so to zone out, to rest myself in this deluxe suite.
Quarterly (U.S.) Winter 83
2000
‘The idea was that kids would sit, stare at the [television] screen, and zone out,’ said Elizabeth Lorch, a psychologist at Amherst College.
transitive. Nigerian English. To allocate a nomination for (a political office) to a candidate from a particular region, under the zoning system: see zoningn. Additions. Also with the candidate as object of the verb. Usually in passive.
Frequently with to, indicating the region to which a nomination is allocated.
1981
At the National Level, the following officers shall be zoned; namely, the Office of the National Chairman, the President, the Vice-President, President and Deputy President of the Senate, National Secretary, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.
C. Okadigbo, Mission of NPN 98
1988
The local..ministerial candidate..was already zoned to a particular areal community in that state.
S. E. Oyovbaire in O. Oyediran, Survey Nigerian Affairs 1978–9vol. I. vii. 89
2019
The chairmanship position was zoned to Osun-Ogbomoso.
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.
/ɡb/ is often treated as a single sound, a simultaneous ‘double articulation’ of the two stop sounds.
Unlike in many other varieties of English, consonants cannot take on the function of vowels in West African English (there are no ‘syllabic consonants’).
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
zone typically occurs about five times per million words in modern written English.
zone is in frequency band 5, which contains words occurring between 1 and 10 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 zone, v., 1790–2010
* 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
1790
0.23
1800
0.24
1810
0.26
1820
0.27
1830
0.29
1840
0.33
1850
0.38
1860
0.43
1870
0.45
1880
0.52
1890
0.61
1900
0.79
1910
1.2
1920
1.8
1930
2.7
1940
3.5
1950
4.4
1960
5.2
1970
5.6
1980
5.4
1990
4.7
2000
4.2
2010
4.0
Frequency of zone, v., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
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 corpus.