zoot suit

American  

[zoot] / zut /

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.

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zoot suit British  

/ 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

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Other Word Forms

• zoot-suiter
  noun

Etymology

Origin of zoot suit

1940–45, rhyming compound based on suit

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

zoot suit

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.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2025

Elsewhere, we check in on how a freshly liberated Mitch McConnell is putting on his zoot suit and spats and living it up a little.

From Slate ● Apr. 27, 2024

“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.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2023

Calloway appeared in a billowing white zoot suit in the hit 1943 movie musical “Stormy Weather.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2023

Here I am in my zoot suit, thinking how country everybody looks compared to me.

From "X: A Novel" by Ilyasah Shabazz