Zee

//ziː// article, name, noun, verb, slang

article, name, noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

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

    "Thus first C checks to see if ex and wye are equal. The resulting value of 1 or 0 (true or false) then is compared to the value of zee."

  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of zee. alt-of
  3. 3
    the 26th letter of the Roman alphabet wordnet
  4. 4
    Something Z-shaped. Found in compounds.

    "zee-bar."

  5. 5
    Sleep. colloquial, plural-normally

    "Time to get some zees."

Verb
  1. 1
    To sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.) Newfoundland, US, informal, intransitive
  2. 2
    To zigzag; to move with sharp alternating turns. Newfoundland, US, intransitive, rare
Article
  1. 1
    Pronunciation spelling of the, representing primarily French or German accented English. Newfoundland, US, alt-of, pronunciation-spelling
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
  2. 2
    Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Internet, derogatory

Example

More examples

"In many dialects of English, the letter Z is pronounced "zed", not "zee"."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Likely an alteration of zed (which see for more), by analogy with other letters such as bee, dee, tee and vee. Fell out of usage in England by the 17th century, and made standard in the U.S. in American Dictionary of English Language by Noah Webster in 1828, though usage varied for decades afterwards.

Etymology 2

From Shanghainese 徐 (6zhi).

Etymology 3

Clipping of Zelenskyy.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.