zoot suit

[zoot]

noun

1. a man's suit with baggy, tight-cuffed, sometimes high-waisted trousers and an oversized jacket with exaggeratedly broad, padded shoulders and wide lapels, often worn with suspenders and a long watch chain and first popularized in the early 1940s.

zoot suit

/ zuːt /

noun

1. slang,  a man's suit consisting of baggy trousers with very tapered bottoms and a long jacket with wide padded shoulders, popular esp in the US in the 1940s

Other Word Forms

• zoot-suiter noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of zoot suit¹

1940–45, rhyming compound based on suit

Word History and Origins

Origin of zoot suit¹

C20: of uncertain origin; perhaps an arbitrary rhyme on suit

Example Sentences

Decked out in a resplendent orange-and-blue-striped zoot suit symbolizing the colors of his beloved New York Knicks, Spike Lee hit the Cannes Film Festival’s red carpet in May in full boogie mode.

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Chavarria tells the story of American fashion through a Chicano lens, creating now-distinctive oversize, sculptural silhouettes that pull from various eras of Mexican American style, from sharply angular zoot suits to blue-collar workwear.

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“The zoot suit was a very conspicuous look,” says Catherine S. Ramirez, author of “The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory.”

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“And I knew that the reason why was because society wanted to attack a group of young men for how they dressed. Yesterday, it was zoot suits; today it’s long white T-shirts and hoodies.”

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I have walked through costume houses in my career and said “Oh my God, that’s a zoot suit from ‘Malcolm X!’”

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