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Zayin (also spelledzain orzayn or simplyzay) is the seventh letter of theSemitic abjads, includingPhoenicianzayn 𐤆,Hebrewzayīnז‎,Aramaiczain 𐡆,Syriaczayn ܙ, andArabiczāyز‎. It represents the sound[z]. It is also related to theAncient North Arabian 𐪘‎‎,South Arabian𐩸, andGe'ezዘ.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to theGreekzeta (Ζ),Etruscanz,LatinZ, andCyrillicZe З, as well asЖ.

TheProto-Sinaiticglyph may have been calledziqq, may not have been based on ahieroglyph, and may have depicted a "fetter".^[1]

An alternative view is that it is based on the "copper ingot" hieroglyph (𓈔) in the form of an axeblade, after noting that the name "zayin" has roots in Aramaic to refer to "Arms," "Armor," and "Metal used for arms."^[2]

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. InHebrew,zayin (זין‎) means "weapon", the verblĕzayyēn (לזיין‎) means "to arm", and the verblĕhizdayyēn (להזדיין‎) means "to arm oneself".

The letter is namedzāy. It has two forms, depending on its position in the word:

The similarity torāʼ ر  is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred tojīm andḥāʼ. In Maltese, the corresponding letter toز isż.

A variant letter ofzāy namedže is used in Persian with three dots above instead of just one dot above. The letter is used in a number of languages, such asPersian,Pashto,Kurdish,Urdu andUyghur (seeK̡ona Yezik̡).

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ז	ז	ז

In modern Hebrew, the frequency of the usage of zayin, out of all the letters, is 0.88%.

Hebrew spelling:זַיִן

In modern Hebrew, the combinationז׳‎ (zayin followed by ageresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote[ʒ] as invision.

Ingematria, zayin represents the numberseven,^[3] and when used at the beginning ofHebrew years it means 7000 (i.e.זתשנד innumbers would be the futuredate 7754).

Zayin, in addition toʻayin,gimel,teth,nun,shin, andtzadi, is one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called atagin) when written in aSefer Torah (Torah scroll).

Zain is a consonant with the/z/ sound which is avoiced alveolar fricative.

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Wikimedia Commons has media related toZayin (letter).

• Phoenician alphabet
• Arabic letters
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• Urdu letters

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