zipperhead

Meaning

Noun

• A soldier in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps or in the Armoured Crewman military trade.
• A person of Asian descent.

Related

Similar words

• trooper
• crewman, tanker, armoured crewman, armoured soldier
• tread-head, treadhead
• zipperlid,
• gook,
• slopehead,
• slant eye

Origin

• zipper + head. From the leather helmets formerly used by early Canadian armoured crewmen, with a pattern of stitching resembling a zipper. There is also a folk etymology referring to the zippers on armoured-vehicle crew suits (re-purposed flight suits).
• 1960s–1970s, zipper + head. Used by soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars; multiple theories exist as to the specific origin. One is that if an Asian person was shot in the middle of the forehead with a machine gun, the head would split as if being unzipped; another, that the appearance of tire tracks on a body having been run over by a military Jeep or that of tank tracks resembled a zipper.