Pertaining or relating to, involving, or constituting a ‘zone’ or ‘zones’, i.e. regions or areas distinctively characterized in some way: see zonen. 2b, 7.
1882
The six zonal areas we have thus described will serve our purpose admirably for grouping together our Seaside Health-Resorts.
Knowledge 7 July 92
1890
Zonal divisions are based upon these bogus species and conclusions drawn from them.
Nature 4 September 454/2
1893
In tracing the zonal parallelism of the Triassic succession within the Alps themselves.
A. Geikie, Text-book of Geology (ed. 3) vi.iii. i. 876
1904
The study..of strata characterised by the dominance of a zone-fossil forms zonal geology.
Edinburgh Review January 219
1909
The companies adopted a zonal tariff (as the State has done for telephone purposes).
Pertaining or relating to, involving, or constituting a ‘zone’ or ‘zones’, i.e. regions or areas distinctively characterized in some way: see zone, n.…
Pertaining or relating to, involving, or constituting a ‘zone’ or ‘zones’, i.e. regions or areas distinctively characterized in some way: see zone, n.…
Soil Science. [<Frenchzonal (N. Sibirtsev 1897, in Compt. Rend. de la VIIe. Session, Congr. géol. internat. (1899) II. iii. v. 80).] Of a soil: regarded as characteristic of a particular climatic or geographic zone and as reflecting the predominant influence of the climate in its formation.
1908
The seven fundamental groups of ‘zonal’ soils just enumerated are spread over the surface of large continents in zones which coincide with the physico-geographical zones of those continents.
Journal Agric. Sciencevol. 3 84
1927
Intrazonal soils originate, according to Sibirceff, where local soil forming forces predominate over the general or zonal forces.
C. F. Marbut, translation of K. D. Glinka, Great Soil Groups 28
1952
In these cases the influence of the material from which the soil is formed overrides that of the climate giving rise to so-called azonal soils (in contrast to the climatic or zonal types).
P. W. Richards, Tropical Rain Forest ix. 210
1972
Apart from being an over-simplification of reality, the zonal system had the unfortunate effect of restricting, in the mind of the student, the distribution of each zonal soil within the limits of its climatic zone.
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
Frequency
zonal typically occurs about once per million words in modern written English.
zonal 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 zonal, adj., 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
0.046
1870
0.078
1880
0.14
1890
0.2
1900
0.25
1910
0.31
1920
0.37
1930
0.64
1940
1.0
1950
1.4
1960
1.6
1970
1.6
1980
1.4
1990
1.1
2000
0.85
2010
0.73
Frequency of zonal, adj., 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.