Zipper

How to spell zipper

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce zipper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does zipper mean?

1. nounA fastener consisting of two rows of interlocking teeth joined or parted by a sliding tab.

Zipper in a sentence

• The zipper on her jacket jammed halfway up.

• He replaced the broken zipper in the tent doorway.

Where does zipper come from?

Language of origin: Other

Zipper began as a trade name rather than an ordinary word. The base 'zip' is imitative, meant to suggest the short, sharp sound of something moving quickly, and it was used in English from the early 1800s for darting movement and rapid energy. In 1923 the American rubber company B.F. Goodrich applied the name 'Zipper' to a line of rubber overshoes that closed with a then-novel sliding fastener, the device patented a few years earlier by Gideon Sundback. The catchy name attached itself to the fastener rather than the boot, and by the 1920s and 1930s 'zipper' had spread into general use for the interlocking-tooth slide closure itself. The doubled p comes straight from adding the agent suffix '-er' to the short word 'zip', the regular pattern that doubles a final consonant after a single stressed vowel, as in 'runner' or 'shopper'.

How the word is built

• zip (imitative of a quick, sharp sound)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix: the thing that does it)