Z, orz, is the twenty-sixth and lastletter of theLatin alphabet. It is used in themodern English alphabet, in the alphabets of other Western European languages, and in others worldwide. Its usual names in English arezed (/ˈzɛd/), which is most commonly used in British English, andzee (/ˈziː/ⓘ), most commonly used in American English,[1] with an occasional archaic variantizzard (/ˈɪzərd/).[2]
Thezebra is sometimes used as a memorization aid in English education.
In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the letter's name iszed/zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from theGreek letterzeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but inAmerican English its name iszee/ziː/, analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc., and deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form.[3]
Another English dialectal form isizzard/ˈɪzərd/. This dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives fromOccitanizèda or theFrenchézed, whose reconstructed Latin form would be*idzēta,[2] perhaps aVulgar Latin form with aprosthetic vowel. Outside of the anglosphere, its variants are still used inHong Kong English andCantonese.[4]
Other languages spell the letter's name in a similar way:zeta inItalian,Basque, andSpanish,seta inIcelandic (no longer part ofits alphabet but found in personal names),zê inPortuguese,zäta inSwedish,zæt inDanish,zet inDutch,Indonesian,Polish,Romanian, andCzech,Zett inGerman (capitalized as a noun),zett inNorwegian,zède inFrench,zetto (ゼット) inJapanese, andgiét inVietnamese (not part ofits alphabet). Several languages render it as/ts/ or/dz/, e.g.tseta/ˈtsetɑ/ or more rarelytset/tset/ inFinnish (sometimes dropping the firstt altogether;/ˈsetɑ/, or/set/ the latter of which is not very commonplace). InStandard Chinesepinyin, the name of the letter Z is pronounced[tsɨ], as in "zi", although the Englishzed andzee have become very common. InEsperanto the name of the letter Z is pronounced/zo/.
TheSemitic symbol was the seventh letter, namedzayin, which meant "weapon" or "sword". It represented either the sound/z/ as in English and French, or possibly more like/dz/ (as in Italianzeta,zero).
The Greek form of Z was a close copy of thePhoenicianZayin (), and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape throughout ancient times. The Greeks called itzeta, a new name made in imitation ofeta (η) andtheta (θ).
In earlier Greek ofAthens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented/dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have stood for/zd/ and/dz/ – there is no consensus concerning this issue.[5] In other dialects, such as Elean andCretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and voicelessth (IPA/ð/ and/θ/, respectively). In the common dialect (koine) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became/z/, as it remains in modern Greek.
TheEtruscan letterZ was derived from thePhoenician alphabet, most probably through the Greek alphabet used on the island of Ischia. InEtruscan, this letter may have represented/ts/.
The letterZ existed in more archaic versions of Latin, but atc. 300 BC,Appius Claudius Caecus, the Romancensor, removed the letter Z from the alphabet, because the appearance while pronouncing it imitated a grinning skull.[6] A more likely explanation is that the/z/ sound that it probably represented had disappeared from Latin after turning into/r/ due to arhotacism process,[7] making the letter useless for spelling Latin words.[8] Whatever the case may be, Appius Claudius's distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few centuries later, after theRoman Conquest of Greece, Z was again borrowed to spell words from the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek.
Before the reintroduction ofz, the sound of zeta was writtens at the beginning of words andss in the middle of words, as insōna forζώνη "belt" andtrapessita forτραπεζίτης "banker".
In some inscriptions,z represented aVulgar Latin sound, likely anaffricate, formed by the merging of thereflexes ofClassical Latin/j/,/dj/ and/gj/:[example needed] for example,zanuariu forianuariu "January",ziaconus fordiaconus "deacon", andoze forhodie "today".[9] Likewise,/di/ sometimes replaced/z/ in words likebaptidiare forbaptizare "to baptize". In modern Italian,z represents/ts/ or/dz/, whereas the reflexes ofianuarius andhodie are written with the letterg (representing/dʒ/ when beforei ande):gennaio,oggi. In other languages, such asSpanish, further evolution of the sound occurred.
Old English usedS alone for both the unvoiced and the voicedsibilant. The Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written withZ but withG orI. The successive changes can be seen in thedoublet formsjealous andzealous. Both of these come from a late Latinzelosus, derived from the imported Greekζῆλοςzêlos. The earlier form isjealous; its initial sound is the[dʒ], which developed toModern French[ʒ].John Wycliffe wrote the word asgelows orielous.
Z at the end of a word was pronouncedts, as in Englishassets, fromOld Frenchasez "enough" (Modern Frenchassez), fromVulgar Latinad satis ("to sufficiency").[10]
In earlier times, theEnglish alphabets used by children terminated not withZ but with& or related typographic symbols.[11][12]
Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for theIcelandic,Finnish andSwedish alphabets isÖ, while it isÅ forDanish andNorwegian. The German alphabet ends withZ, as the umlauts (Ä/ä,Ö/ö, andÜ/ü) and the letterß (Eszett orscharfes S) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowelsa/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling ofss, not as independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order.[citation needed]
It represents/ʒ/ in words likeseizure. More often, this sound appears as⟨su⟩ or⟨si⟩ in words such asmeasure,decision, etc. In all these words,/ʒ/ developed from earlier/zj/ byyod-coalescence.
Few words in theBasic English vocabulary begin or end with⟨z⟩, though it occurs within other words. It is theleast frequently used letter in writtenEnglish,[13] with a frequency of about 0.08% in words.⟨z⟩ is more common in theOxford spelling of British English than in standardBritish English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically 'correct'-ize endings, which are closer toGreek, to-ise endings, which are closer toFrench; however,-yse is preferred over-yze in Oxford spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words likeanalyse. The most common variety of English it is used in isAmerican English, which prefers both the-ize and-yze endings. One native Germanic English word that contains 'z',freeze (pastfroze, participlefrozen) came to be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with 's' (as withchoose,chose andchosen).
⟨z⟩ is used in writing to represent the act ofsleeping (often using multiple z's, likezzzz), as anonomatopoeia for the sound of closed-mouth humansnoring.[14]
CastilianSpanish uses the letter to represent/θ/ (as English⟨th⟩ inthing), though in other dialects (Latin American,Andalusian) this sound has merged with/s/. Before voiced consonants, the sound is voiced to[ð] or[z], sometimes debbucalized to[ɦ] (as in the surnameGuzmán[ɡuðˈman],[ɡuzˈman] or[ɡuɦˈman]). This is the only context in which⟨z⟩ can represent a voiced sibilant[z] in Spanish, though⟨s⟩ also represents[z] (or[ɦ], depending on the dialect) in this environment.
In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish,⟨z⟩ usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the value of⟨s⟩; it normally occurs only inloanwords that are spelt with⟨z⟩ in the source languages.
The letter⟨z⟩ on its own represents/z/ inPolish. It is also used in four of the seven officially recognized digraphs:⟨cz⟩ (/t͡ʂ/),⟨dz⟩ (/d͡z/),⟨rz⟩ (/ʐ/ or/ʂ/) and⟨sz⟩ (/ʂ/), and is one of the most frequently used of the consonant letters in that language. (Other Slavic languages avoid digraphs and mark the corresponding phonemes with theháček (caron) diacritic:⟨č⟩,⟨ď⟩,⟨ř⟩,⟨š⟩; this system has its origin inCzech orthography of theHussite period.)⟨z⟩ can also appear with diacritical marks, namely⟨ź⟩ and⟨ż⟩, which are used to represent the sounds/ʑ/ and/ʐ/. They also appear in the digraphs⟨dź⟩ (/d͡ʑ/) and⟨dż⟩ (/d͡ʐ/).
Hungarian uses⟨z⟩ in the digraphs⟨sz⟩ (expressing/s/, as opposed to the value of⟨s⟩, which isʃ), and⟨zs⟩ (expressingʒ). The letter⟨z⟩ on its own represents/z/.
InModern Scots,⟨z⟩ usually represents/z/, but is also used in place of the obsolete letter⟨ȝ⟩ (yogh), which represents/g/ and/j/. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use⟨z⟩ in this manner, such asbrulzie (pronounced 'brulgey' meaning broil),⟨z⟩ as a yogh substitute is more common in people's names and placenames. Often the names are pronounced to follow the apparent English spelling, so Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with/z/. Menzies, however, retains the pronunciation of 'Mingus'.
In theNihon-shiki,Kunrei-shiki, andHepburn romanisations ofJapanese,⟨z⟩ stands for a phoneme whoseallophones include[z] and[dz] (seeYotsugana). Additionally, in the Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems,⟨z⟩ is used to represent that same phoneme before/i/, where it's pronounced[d͡ʑ~ʑ].
In theJyutping romanization ofCantonese,⟨z⟩ represents/ts/. Other romanizations use either⟨j⟩,⟨ch⟩, or⟨ts⟩.
Inmathematics,U+2124ℤDOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL Z is used to denote the set ofintegers. Originally, was just ahandwritten version of the bold capitalZ used in printing but, over time, it has come to be used more frequently in printed works too. The variablez is also commonly used to represent acomplex number.
In geometry, z is used to denote the third axis inCartesian coordinates when representing 3-dimensional space.
Inchemistry, the letterZ is used to denote theatomic number of an element (number of protons), such asZ=3 forlithium.
ß : German letter regarded as a ligature oflong s (ſ) and short s, calledscharfes S orEszett. (In some typefaces and handwriting styles, it is rather a ligature of long s and tailed z (ſʒ).)
Ȥ ȥ: Latin letter z with a hook, intended for the transcription ofMiddle High German, for instances of the letterz with a sound value of /s/.
^Canada and some Caribbean countries usezee along withzed, with the latter being preferred in written English.
^ab"Z",Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989);Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "zee",op. cit.
^One early use of "zee":Lye, Thomas (1969) [2nd ed., London, 1677].A new spelling book, 1677. Menston, (Yorkshire) Scolar Press. p. 24.LCCN70407159.Zee Za-cha-ry, Zion, zeal
^Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott."ζῆτα".An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon.Archived from the original on March 6, 2020. RetrievedJuly 23, 2016.
^Lindsay, Wallace Martin. The Latin Language: An Historical Account of Latin Sounds, Stems and Flexions. United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1894. "Martianus Capella tells us that the letter was removed from the alphabet by Appius Claudius Caecus the famous censor of 312 BC adding the curious reason that in pronouncing it the teeth assumed the appearance of the teeth of a grinning skull Mart Cap iii 261 z vero idcirco Appius Claudius detestatur quod dentes mortui dum expri mitur imitatur"
