zed

Etymology

From Middle English zed, zedde, zede, from Old French zede, from Late Latin zeta, from Ancient Greek ζῆτα (zêta), from Hebrew ז (zayin) with influence from beta, eta and theta. Letter had rare nonstandard usage in Old English, such as in bezt, where it represented "ts" (compare the German, Italian, and Finnish pronunciation of Z). For the sleep sense, see zzz. The zombie sense comes from the initial letter. Doublet of zeta. Cognate to Spanish zeta, German Zett, French zède, Italian zeta, and perhaps Portuguese zê.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /zɛd/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛd

Noun

zed (plural zeds) (chiefly Commonwealth, UK, Ireland)

1. The name of the Latin-script letter Z/z.
   • 2021, Pat Manser, More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary, Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary, page 298:

     Zzz...With all those ʻzedsʼ I'll be sending you to sleep.

2. (in combination) Something Z-shaped.

   zed-bar

3. (colloquial, usually in the plural) Sleep.

   I'm going to go get some zeds.

4. (slang) A zombie.

   A horde of zeds began to shuffle into the shopping mall.

Verb

zed (third-person singular simple present zeds, present participle zedding, simple past and past participle zedded) (chiefly UK, Ireland, Commonwealth)

1. (intransitive, informal) To sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.)
   • 1991, Jim Cartwright, Bed:

     Zedding hogs. Sleep sippers and spitters. Look at 'em cooking in their own snoring heat. One nose after another.

   • 1992, David Robins, Tarnished vision: crime and conflict in the inner city:

     I guess I must have zedded, for I find a police officer, the same one that nicked me, shaking me.

   • 2007, Polly Williams, The Yummy Mummy:

     "Zedding away." "God, I was having the most awful dream. That you'd got lost by the sea and I couldn't find you and something was chasing me, me and Evie."

2. (intransitive, rare) To zigzag; to move with sharp alternating turns.
   • 1931, Reginald Rankin, The Collected Works of Lt. Colonel Sir Reginald Rankin:

     We were zedding hell-bells up the hill towards Cervione, with a bank of road metal and a precipice on our left...

   • 1994, Tibor Fischer, The thought gang:

     Licking his lips, his hand zedded on my thigh and he commented, penetratingly, that it wasn't pussy, but that driving the unmade road wasn't at all bad.

See also

• zeta

Anagrams

• DEZ, Dez

Etymology

From British English zed.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈzed/ [ˈzet̪]

Noun

zéd (plural zed-zed)

1. The name of the Latin-script letter Z/z.

Etymology 1

Etymology 2

Etymology

Inherited from Proto-Slavic *zidъ.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (13^th CE) /ˈzɛd/
• IPA^(key): (15^th CE) /ˈzɛt/

Noun

zed f

1. wall

Further reading

• Jan Gebauer (1903–1916) “zed”, in Slovník staročeský (in Czech), Prague: Česká grafická společnost "unie", Česká akademie císaře Františka Josefa pro vědy, slovesnost a umění

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /zɛd/

Etymology 1

From Middle English soden, sode (“seethed”, past participle of sethen), with the vowel taken from other forms of the verb.

Etymology 2

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 81 & 104