What it means
An abrupt way to tell someone to shut up, like you’re zipping their mouth closed. Harsher than shush and miles less polite than could you be quiet, it’s what you say when someone won’t stop waffling or is getting cheeky. Can be banter between mates or a parent-to-kid warning, but the wrong tone makes it straight-up rude. Often pops up as zip your lip too.
Usage examples
"I started explaining crypto down the pub and my mate goes, Zip it, you sound like a broken satnav. Barman just smirked and nicked my pint."
"I started explaining the new crypto wallet to the lads down at the King's Head in Camden, and my mate Dave goes zip it Steve, you sound like a broken satnav on a bad data plan, the barman just smirked and reached for my pint to top it up at the same time."
"The Year Six teacher in the village school in Hampshire has perfected the calm zip it gesture across the lips at full assembly, the whole hall goes quiet within four seconds flat, the head teacher steals the move regularly for the staff meeting, and the new student teacher has been practising on her cat at home in the evening."
Where it comes from
From the literal image of pulling a zipper shut across the mouth as a silencing gesture, popularized in American English schoolyard slang of the nineteen sixties and reinforced by the cartoonish hand motion across the lips that accompanied it. The phrase migrated easily across the Atlantic into British English by the nineteen eighties as the universally understood imperative shutting down the babbling friend or the cheeky child at the dinner table, and survives intact today as the standard pub-banter put-down in Manchester and Manhattan alike across all generations.
Other ways to say it
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