Zayin

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← Waw Zayin Heth →
Phoenician
Hebrew	ז‎
Aramaic
Syriac	ܙ
Arabic	ز
Phonemic representation	z
Position in alphabet	7
Numerical value	7
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Ζ
Latin	Z, Ʒ, ẞ
Cyrillic	З

Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew 'Zayin ז‎, Yiddish Zoyen ז‎, Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn or Zāy ز. It represents the sound [z].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З.

Meaning[]

The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".^[1]

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Mishnaic Hebrew, zayin (זין‎) means "sword", and the verb lezayen (לזיין‎) means "to arm". In Modern Hebrew slang, zayin (זין‎) means "penis" and lezayen (לזין‎) is a vulgar term which generally means to perform sexual intercourse,^[2][3] although the older meaning survives in maavak mezuyan ("armed struggle") (מאבק מזוין‎), kokhot mezuyanim ("armed forces") (כוחות מזוינים‎), and beton mezuyan (בטון מזוין‎) ("armed, i.e., reinforced concrete").

Arabic zāy[]

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

The similarity to rāʼ  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 to jīm and ḥāʼ.

The same letter has another name – ze – in a number of languages, such as Persian.

Že[]

It also has a modified version: ژ Persian pronunciation: [ʒe], which is used in Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡).

Hebrew zayin[]

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 combination ז׳‎ (zayin followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [ʒ] as in vision.

Significance[]

Numerical value (gematria)[]

In gematria, zayin represents the number seven,^[4] and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years it means 7000 (i.e. זתשנד in numbers would be the future date 7754).

Use in Torah scroll[]

Zayin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll), besides ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun, shin, and tzadi.

Meaning as a noun[]

For the Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew meaning of 'zayin' as a noun, see above.

It is one of several Hebrew letters that have an additional meaning as a noun. The others are: bet [ב‎, the 2nd letter], whose name is a grammatical form of the word for 'house' (בית); vav [ו‎, the 6th letter], whose name means 'hook' (וו); kaf [כ‎, the 11th], whose name means 'palm [of the hand]' or 'tablespoon' (כף); ʻayin [ע‎, the 16th], whose name means 'eye' (עין); pe [פ‎, the 17th], whose name means 'mouth' (פה); qof [ק‎, the 19th], whose name means 'monkey' or "eye of needle" (קוף); tav [ת‎, the 22nd], whose name means 'mark' (תו), and several other Hebrew letters, whose names are ancient Hebrew forms of nouns still used, with a slight change of form or pronunciation, as nouns in modern Hebrew.^[5]

Syriac zain[]

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

Character encodings[]