zed

Etymology

From Middle English zed, zedde, zede, from Old French zede, from Late Latin zeta, from Ancient Greek ζῆτα (zêta), from Hebrew 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.

noun

1. The name of the Latin-script letter Z.
   Zzz...With all those ʻzedsʼ I'll be sending you to sleep. 2021, Pat Manser, More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary, Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary, page 298
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

1. (intransitive, informal) To sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.)
   Zedding hogs. Sleep sippers and spitters. Look at 'em cooking in their own snoring heat. One nose after another. 1991, Jim Cartwright, Bed
   I guess I must have zedded, for I find a police officer, the same one that nicked me, shaking me. 1992, David Robins, Tarnished vision: crime and conflict in the inner city
   "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." 2007, Polly Williams, The Yummy Mummy
2. (intransitive, rare) To zigzag; to move with sharp alternating turns.
   We were zedding hell-bells up the hill towards Cervione, with a bank of road metal and a precipice on our left... 1931, Reginald Rankin, The Collected Works of Lt. Colonel Sir Reginald Rankin
   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. 1994, Tibor Fischer, The thought gang