Other forms: zebras
A zebra is an African animal like a horse with black and white stripes. A herd of zebra, zebra stripes, the zebra crossing.
Every animal's pattern is unique, and the best-supported explanation for the stripes is that they confuse biting flies, which land far less often on striped surfaces. They have never been successfully domesticated. A zebra crossing is named for the stripes.
1nounzebraA striped African animal of the horse family.
“A zebra drank at the waterhole while lions watched from the grass.”
zebra is an animal.
Italian and Portuguese zebra, from an Old Portuguese word for a wild ass, applied to the African animal from 1600.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁eḱ-
Latin
equiferus — wild horse
Vulgar Latin
*eciferus
roa-opt
enzebro
Portuguese
zebra
Italian
zebra
English, today
zebra
Built from
1600. Borrowed from Italian zebra, from Portuguese zebra, zebro (“zebra”), from roa-opt enzebro, ezebra, azebra (“wild ass”), from earlier cebrario (882), ezebrario (897), from Vulgar Latin eciferus, from Latin equiferus (“wild horse”) (Pliny), from equus (“horse”) + ferus (“wild”). While the word was traditionally pronounced with a long vowel in the first syllable in standard English, during the twentieth century a vowel shift occurred in regions of England, with the shortening of the first vowel. This pronunciation is now used throughout the UK and most Commonwealth nations. The long-vowel pronunciation remains standard in Canadian and American English and is used in the UK only by some older, conservative RP speakers. unlikely diagnosis Originates in the advice often given to medical students, "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA