Z the twenty-sixth letter of the English alphabet and
the last, although till recent times the alphabets used
by children terminated not with z but with &, or 🙵.
For & the English name is ampersand, i.e. “and per se
and,” though the Scottish name epershand, i.e. “Et, per se and,” is
more logical and also more clearly shows its origin to be the Latin
et, of which it is but the manuscript form. To the following of z
by & George Eliot refers when she makes Jacob Storey say, “He
thought it (z) had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like,
though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could
see.” Z is put at the end of the alphabet because it occupied
that position in the Latin alphabet. In early Latin the sound
represented by z passed into r, and consequently the symbol
became useless. It was therefore removed from the alphabet
and G (q.v.) put in its place.
In the 1st century B.C. it was,
like y, introduced again at the end, in order to represent more
precisely than was before possible the value of the Greek Ζ,
which had been previously spelt with s at the beginning and ss
in the middle of words: sona = ζώνη, “belt”; tarpessita =
τραπεζίτης, “banker.” The Greek form was a close copy of the
Phoenician symbol 
, and the Greek inscriptional form remained
in this shape throughout. The name of the Semitic symbol was
Zayin, but this name, for some unknown reason, was not adopted
by the Greeks, who called it Zeta. Whether, as seems most likely,
Zeta was the name of one of the other Semitic sibilants Zade
(Tzaddi) transferred to this by mistake, or whether the name is a
new one, made in imitation of Eta (η) and Theta (θ), is disputed.
The pronunciation of the Semitic letter was the voiced s, like
the ordinary use of z in English, as in zodiac, raze. It is
probable that in Greek there was a considerable variety of
pronunciation from dialect to dialect. In the earlier Greek of
Athens, North-west Greece and Lesbos the pronunciation seems
to have been zd, in Attic from the 4th century B.C. onwards it
seems to have been only a voiced s, and this also was probably
the pronunciation of the dialect from which Latin borrowed
its Greek words. In other dialects, as Elean and Cretan, the
symbol was apparently used for sounds resembling the English
voiced and unvoiced th (ð, þ). In the common dialect (κοινή)
which succeeded the older dialects, ζ became a voiced s, as
it remains in modern Greek. In Vulgar Latin the Greek Ζ
seems to have been pronounced as dy and later y; di being
found for z in words like baptidiare for baptizare, “baptize,”
while conversely z appears for di in forms like zaconus, zabulus,
for diaconus, “deacon,” diabulus, “devil.” Z also is often
written for the consonantal I (J) as in zunior for iunior, “younger”
(see Grandgent, Introduction to Vulgar Latin, §§ 272, 339).
Besides this, however, there was a more cultured pronunciation
of z as dz, which passed through French into Middle English.
Early English had used s alone for both the unvoiced and the
voiced sibilant; the Latin sound imported through French was
new and was not written with z but with g or i. The successive
changes can be well seen in the double forms from the same
original, jealous and zealous. Both of these come from a late
Latin zelosus, derived from the imported Greek ζῆλος. Much
the earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the dz which in
later French is changed to z (voiced s). It is written gelows or
ielous by Wycliffe and his contemporaries, the form with i is
the ancestor of the modern form. The later word zealous was
borrowed after the French dz had become z. At the end of
words this z was pronounced ts as in the English assets, which
comes from a late Latin ad satis through an early French asez,
“enough.” With z also is frequently written zh, the voiced
form of sh, in azure, seizure. But it appears even more
frequently as s before u, and as si or ti before other vowels in
measure, decision, transition, &c., or in foreign words as g, as in
rouge. For the ȝ representing g and y in Scottish proper names
see under Y.
(P. Gi.)
ZAANDAM (incorrectly Saardam), a town of Holland, in the province of North Holland, on the river Zaan, 6½ m. N.W. of Amsterdam, with which it is connected by railway and steamer. Pop. (1905) 23,773. It is of typically Dutch appearance, with low, brightly coloured houses. It has an important trade in timber, and numerous windmills in the vicinity provide power for oil, cement and paper works, timber-sawing and corn-grinding. At Zaandam is preserved the wooden hut which Peter the Great occupied for a week in 1697 while studying shipbuilding and paper-making.
ZABERN (French, Saverne), a town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, district of Lower Alsace, situated on the Rhine-Marne canal at the foot of a pass over the Vosges, and 27 m. N.W. of Strassburg by the railway to Deutsch Avricourt. Pop. (1900) 8499. Its principal building, the former episcopal residence, rebuilt by Cardinal de Rohan in 1779, is now used as barracks. There are also a 15th century church and an antiquarian museum. In the vicinity are the ruined castles of Hoch-barr, Grossgeroldseck, Ochsenstein and Greifenstein. Hence a beautiful road, immortalized by Goethe in Dichtung und Wahrheit, leads across the Vosges to Pfalzburg.
Zabern (Tres Tabernae) was an important place in the times of the Romans, and, after being destroyed by the Alamanni, was rebuilt by the emperor Julian. During the Peasants' War the town was occupied, in 1525, by the insurgents, who were driven out in their turn by Duke Anton of Lorraine. It suffered much from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, but the episcopal castle, then destroyed, was subsequently rebuilt, and in 1852 was converted by Louis Napoleon into a place of residence for widows of knights of the Legion of Honour.
See Fischer, Geschichte der Stadt Zabern (Zabern, 1824).
ZABRZE, a town of Germany, in the extreme S.E. of Prussian Silesia, on the railway between Gleiwitz and Königshütte. Pop. (1905) 55,634. Like other towns in this populous region, it is an important manufacturing centre, having coal-mines, iron, wire, glass, chemical and oil works, breweries, &c.
ZACATECAS, a state of Mexico, bounded N by Durango and Coahuila, E. by San Luis Potosi, S. by Aguascalientes and Jalisco, and W. by Jalisco and Durango. Area, 24,757 sq. m. Pop. (1900) 462,190. It belongs wholly to the great central plateau of Mexico, with an average elevation of about 7700 ft. The state is somewhat mountainous, being traversed in the W. by lateral ranges of the Sierra Madre Occidental, and by numerous isolated ranges in other parts—Mazapil, Norillos, Guadalupe and others. There are no large rivers, only the small head-streams of the Aguanaval in the N., and of the Guazamota, Bolanos and Juchipila in the W., the last three being tributaries oi the Rio Grande de Santiago. As the rainfall is light this lack of streams suitable for irrigation is a drawback to agriculture. The climate is dry and generally healthy, being warm in the valleys and temperate in the mountains. The agricultural products are cereals, sugar and maguey, the first being dependent on the rainfall, often failing altogether, the second on irrigation in the lower valleys, and the latter doing best in a dry climate on a calcareous soil with water not far beneath the surface. There is also a considerable production of peaches, apricots and grapes, the last being made into wine. A few cattle are raised, and considerable attention is given to the rearing of sheep, goats and swine. A natural product is guayule, a shrub from which rubber is extracted. The chief industry of Zacatecas, however, is mining for silver, gold, mercury, copper, iron, zinc, lead, bismuth, antimony and salt. Its mineral wealth was discovered soon after the conquest, and some of its mines are among the most famous of Mexico, dating from 1546. One of the most productive of its silver mines, the Alvarado, has records which show a production of nearly $800,000,000 in silver between 1548 and 1867. The state is traversed by the Mexican Central and the Mexican National railways. Its manufactures are limited chiefly to the
