A supporter of Emiliano Zapata (see etymology); a member of the revolutionary guerrilla movement which was founded c1910 by Zapata and which fought during the Mexican Revolution to achieve the redistribution of agricultural land. Cf. Zapatistan. A.1. Now historical.
1911
The Zapatists have thus far refused to recognize the Provisional Government.
New York Times 30 August 6/3
1939
Organs of the Comintern throughout the world were to discover..that he had never been a Leninist, but only a petty-bourgeois agrarian Zapatist (follower of Zapata) and had now become a bourgeois painter altogether.
B. D. Wolfe, Diego Rivera xx. 253
1980
A Memorial drawn up by the Zapatists in late September 1911.
G. Rudé, Ideol. & Popular Protest (1995) ii. iii. 70
2014
Despite the general atmosphere of repression and the threats to which villagers were submitted to make them denounce Zapatists, no denouncing took place.
V. Branchet-Márquez, Contention & Inequality in Mexico 1910–2010 iii. 69
A member or supporter of a revolutionary force espousing ideals for social and agrarian reform similar to those of Zapata, which launched a popular uprising in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in January 1994. Cf. Zapatistan. A.2.
1994
Few elsewhere may follow the Chiapas rebels' call to arms. Indeed some villagers have criticised the Zapatists, some of whose recruits say they were coerced.
Economist 8 January 46/1
2001
Passing the bill, releasing political prisoners and withdrawing the army from various points in Chiapas are the Zapatists' conditions for agreeing once again to talk to the government and, eventually, to end the rebellion.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Nexis) 6 March b5
2022
Zapatists are reinventing their utopia in Chiapas.
E. Barozet et al., Where has Social Justice Gone? Introduction p. liii
Of, relating to, or designating the Zapatists (in either sense). Cf. Zapatistaadj.
1911
Ministerial changes in Mexico. (The Zapatist rising).
Times 30 October 5/1 (headline)
1974
The Zapatist facet of the Mexican revolution.
American Political Science Reviewvol. 68 1352/1
1994
Two weeks after the start of their quixotic rebellion, the ‘Zapatist’ peasants whose uprising in Chiapas state shocked the Mexican government on new year's day continue to elude its troops.
Economist (Nexis) 15 January 39
2015
The Zapatist armed rebellion in 1994 was a forceful expression of massive popular resistance against neoliberal reform.
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
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
Forms
Variant forms
Also with lower-case initial.
Frequency
Zapatist typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
Zapatist 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 Zapatist, n. & adj., 1910–2010
* 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
1910
0.0021
1920
0.002
1930
0.0023
1940
0.0025
1950
0.0046
1960
0.0047
1970
0.0045
1980
0.0046
1990
0.0051
2000
0.0052
2010
0.0057
Zapatist, n. & adj. was first published in September 2004.