zoot suit

[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.
Origin
1940-45, Americanism; rhyming compound based on suit
British Dictionary definitions for zoot suit

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
Derived Forms
zoot-suiter, noun
Word Origin
C20: of uncertain origin; perhaps an arbitrary rhyme on suit
Word Origin and History for zoot suit
n.

1942, American English slang, the first element probably a nonsense reduplication of suit (cf. reet pleat, drape shape from the same jargon).

Slang definitions & phrases for zoot suit

zoot suit

noun phrase

A man's suit with a jacket having very wide lapels, heavily padded shoulders, and many-buttoned sleeves, with very high-waisted trousers full in the leg and tapering to narrow cuffs •Such garments were worn as symbols of status and defiance, esp by urban black hipsters and Los Angeles Chicanos: Some were garbed in short sleeve shirts, others in zoot suits/ Jelly got into his zoot suit with the reet pleats

[1942+; origin unknown; probably in essence a rhyming phrase of the sort common in black English and slang; perhaps related to other jive and cool-talk terms like vootie]