A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia, Page 18
Some of these words are the last words in a dictionary or other reference book. Some of these words do not appear in dictionaries. Dan Tilque, Philip Bennett, Stuart Kidd, and James A. Landau contributed to this section.
WORD DEFINITION SOURCE
ZUZIM a people the Bible (last proper name)
ZSIGMONDY THEOREM a mathematical theorem CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics
ZWISCHENZUG an “in-between move” in chess The Chess Thinking Dictionary by Bruce Pandolfini
ZYGOMATIC pertaining to a cavity in a bone of the temples like a yoke A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806)
ZYLKS town in Louisiana Street Atlas USA (last town name)
ZYMOSAN an insoluble polysaccharide fraction of yeast cell walls Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition
ZYMOTIC fermentative or infectious Worcester’s School Dictionary (1883)
ZYMURGY the study of fermentation older MW Collegiate Dictionaries
ZYRIAN a Uralic language
ZYTHUM ancient Egyptian malt beer Winston Dictionary (1942) and An American Dictionary of the English Language (1902)
ZYUGANOV, GENNADY Russian politician Grolier Encyclopedia (1997) last entry
ZYWIEC city in Poland Rand McNally International Atlas
ZYWNY Polish violinist Encyclopaedia Britannica (1977)
ZYXIN a protein associated with focal adhesions and lamellipodia in eucaryotic cells …
ZYXT obsolete Kentish 2nd sing. ind. pres. of see Oxford English Dictionary, first edition
ZYYI town in Cyprus National Geographic Atlas of the World, rev. 6th ed.
ZYZMA river in Belarus Rand McNally New International Atlas
ZYZOMYS a genus of rodents Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia (entire text)
ZYZYN variant of Cieszyn The New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia (1951)
ZYZZA a genus of leafhoppers
ZYZZLE variant of zizzle, sizzle Funk & Wagnalls Practical Standard Dictionary (1935)
ZYZZOGETON a South American leaf hopper Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition
ZYZZYVA a South American weevil American Heritage Dictionary
ZYZZYX a genus of wasps
ZYZZYXDONTA a snail with characters the extreme opposite of Aaadonta.
ZYZZYZUS a genus of coelenterates
ZZ zigzag or zigzag approach Info Please On-Line Dictionary
ZZ. abbreviation for ginger Info Please On-Line Dictionary
Z-ZERO a hypothetical elementary particle
ZZ GENOTYPE a deficiency of alpha1-antitrypsin Stedman’s Online Medical Dictionary
ZZT an ASCII based computer game created in 1991 by Tim Sweeney Wikipedia
ZZT-oop possibly the first in-game scripting language ever written Wikipedia
ZZYZX a road intersecting Interstate 15 near Baker, California Street Atlas USA
ZZYZXENSIS part of Apolysis zzyzxensis, a bombyliid fly (named for the Desert Studies Area on Zzyzx Road)
ZZZ used to represent the sound of snoring The Random House College Dictionary, Cambridge International Dictionary of English, Encarta World English Dictionary, North American Edition
According to Jackie Hyman, the last four words of Noah Webster were ZYMOGEN, ZYMOGRAM, ZYMOSAN, ZYZZLEGETTEM.
In the entry for grok, the Oxford English Dictionary has the following quotation from the Mar. 15, 1969, New Yorker: “I was thinking we ought to get together somewhere, Mr. Zzyzbyzynsky, and grok about our problems.”
Under the main entry for Z in the OED2, there are the following sub-entries: zzp, Zzzz, Zzzzed, Zzzt, Zzzzzz, Zzzzzzz, ZZZZZZZZZ.
According to a book on the history of the Burlington Railroad, in the early 1930’s the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad (now part of the Burlington Northern Railroad) was developing something new: a Diesel-powered streamliner. At one meeting between the President of the CB&Q and his top brass, the question arose: What do we name this new streamliner? One of the executives present said that he was curious as to what was the final word in the dictionary, as he would like to refer to the new train as “the last word” in transportation. The President called for a dictionary and found the final entry was for “zymurgy”. However, in looking through the “z” entries, someone found the entry “Zephyr” and that is how the famous Burlington Zephyrs got their name.
The OED2 has ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (42 letters, a representation of snoring) in a citation at ‘Z’; however this “word” does not appear in the OED2 as a vocabulary entry.
In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Jim, the gentleman caller says, “Knowledge–Zzzzzp! Money –Zzzzzp! Power! That’s the cycle democracy is built on!”
In The Tunnel by William H Gass, ZZZZZ is the sound a zipper makes: “Zzzz, he says the zipped goes.”
In the on-line “Philosophy of Mind” Dictionary, ZZZZ is jocularly quoted as meaning “The mental state most often encountered by undergrads in philosophy of mind courses.”
According to the Strange & Unusual Dictionaries web site: ZRP is the sound of an android or robot malfunctioning, as in The Metallic Touch; ZZYXX is an AudioAnimatronic figure originally built to serve as a customs inspector in Tokyo Disneyland’s “Star Tours” attraction; and ZZZTT is the sound made by an electronic field, as in the comic book Electric Fear.
The Music-Lovers Encyclopedia by Rupert Hughes (all editions from 1914 to 1956) has this entry: “zzxjoanw (shaw) Maori. 1. Drum. 2. Fife. 3. Conclusion.” According to Philip Cohen in Word Ways (Nov. 1976), there are several problems with this entry, notably the fact that it’s an impossible Maori word, both in spelling and pronunciation. Cohen suspects that Hughes made up the word as a joke. In his book, Earth, David Brin has a Maori character playing a zzxjoanw. Asked about this, Brin said that he’d gotten the word from Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary. Anne Woodley, who is from New Zealand, agrees that ZZXJOANW is not a Maori word. She writes, “There are no Z, X or J in the Maori language - also the the phonetics aren’t right for the Maori, or indeed any Pacific Island language, all of which come from the same family.”
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