Phonemic representation z Numerical value 7 | Position in alphabet 7 | |
Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew 'Zayin ז, Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn ز. It represents the sound [z].
Contents
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З.
Origins
The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Biblical 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 , although the older meaning survives in maavak mezuyan ("armed struggle") (מאבק מזוין), kohot mezuyanim ("armed forces") (כוחות מזוינים), and beton mezuyan (בטון מזוין) ("armed, i.e., reinforced concrete"). The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".
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
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
In gematria, zayin represents the number seven, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years it means 7000 (i.e. זתשנד in numbers would be the future date 7754).
Zayin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah, besides ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun, shin, and tzadi.
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 'spoon' (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' (קוף); shin [ש, the 21st], whose name means 'tooth' (שין); 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.
Syriac zain
Zain is a consonant with the /z/ sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.