Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) derog. term for an Italian, usu. of a recent immigrant.

1994		P. Blauner Casino Moon 218: Every day I read in the paper about the Sicilian Mafia. These guys got balls. [...] We get a couple of these zips off the boat working for us, it’d be just like the old days.
2002		C. Stella Jimmy Bench-Press 2: He’s a zip. Sixty-two years old, off the fuckin’ boat.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 63: The mixture of hyper-speed Sicilian and slow English that earned native guys like him the behind-the-back handle ‘zips’.
2024		C. Stella Joey Piss Pot 37: Still considered a zip by some in the Cirelli crew, Rapino’s reputation as a stone killer kept them from speaking such insults in his presence.