Zip

How to spell zip

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce zip

What does zip mean?

1. nounA fastening device with two rows of interlocking metal or plastic teeth joined or parted by a sliding tab.
2. verbTo close or open something using a fastener of interlocking teeth.
3. verbTo move or travel somewhere very quickly.
4. verbTo compress one or more computer files into a single smaller archive.

Zip in a sentence

• noun

  The zip on my jacket jammed halfway up.

• verb

  Please zip up your coat before we go outside.

• verb

  The courier can zip across town in under ten minutes.

• verb

  You can zip the folder before emailing it to the client.

• noun

  She replaced the broken zip in the old tent.

• verb

  He had to zip the bag shut to fit it in the locker.

Where does zip come from?

Language of origin: Other

Zip began life in the early 1800s as a piece of pure sound imitation, an English coinage meant to echo the short, sharp hiss of something moving at speed, such as a bullet flying past or a fabric tearing. Because it was built from sound rather than borrowed from another language, it had no foreign root; it simply captured the noise of quickness. By the late 1800s the word had broadened to mean energy or liveliness, as in doing something with zip. In 1925 an American company trademarked the slide fastener as the Zipper, naming it after this same lively sound, and British speakers shortened that back to zip for the fastener itself. The computing sense, compressing files into a smaller bundle, was popularised by the PKZIP program in the late 1980s, again playing on the idea of something made fast and tidy. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the only real trap is remembering it is a single short word rather than anything fancier.

How the word is built

• zip (imitative root suggesting a light, fast sound), used as both noun and verb