Word.ws English Dictionary

zed

/zɛd/

zed noun: the name of the Latin script letter Z/z.

Noun (1)

zed (plural zeds)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland) The name of the Latin script letter Z/z.
    • Zzz...With all those ʻzedsʼ I'll be sending you to sleep.2021, Pat Manser, More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary, Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary, page 298
    Synonyms:
    1-3
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, in-compounds) Something Z-shaped.
    • zed-bar
  3. (Commonwealth, Ireland, colloquial, plural-normally) Sleep.
    • I'm going to go get some zeds.
    Synonyms:
    zee
  4. (Commonwealth, Ireland, slang) A zombie.
    • A horde of zeds began to shuffle into the shopping mall.

Verb

zed (third-person singular simple present zeds, present participle zedding, simple past and past participle zedded)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal, intransitive) To sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.)
    • Zedding hogs. Sleep sippers and spitters. Look at 'em cooking in their own snoring heat. One nose after another.1991, Jim Cartwright, Bed
    • I guess I must have zedded, for I find a police officer, the same one that nicked me, shaking me.1992, David Robins, Tarnished vision: crime and conflict in the inner city
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, intransitive, rare) To zigzag; to move with sharp alternating turns.
    • We were zedding hell-bells up the hill towards Cervione, with a bank of road metal and a precipice on our left...1931, Reginald Rankin, The Collected Works of Lt. Colonel Sir Reginald Rankin
    • Licking his lips, his hand zedded on my thigh and he commented, penetratingly, that it wasn't pussy, but that driving the unmade road wasn't at all bad.1994, Tibor Fischer, The thought gang

Proper noun capitalized: Zed

Zed

  1. A diminutive of the male given name Zedekiah.
    • “So you changed it.”
      “Yes.” He turns off the tap.
      “Why did you choose the name Zed? What does it mean?”
      “Nothing. It's the last letter of the alphabet.”1974, Alison Lurie, The War Between the Tates

Noun (2) capitalized: Zed

Zed (plural Zeds)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Z (“a member of Generation Z”).
    • Youth jargon is in constant flux. What may be all the go today, may disappear tomorrow. Herein some of the slang may be recognisable to Y-ers but not Zeds and vice versa.2011, Mark McCrindle, Emily Wolfinger, Word Up: A Lexicon and Guide to Communication in the 21st Century, Halstead Press, →ISBN, page 175
    • While Millennials started using computers for games, word processing, and rudimentary e-mail, Zeds have been fully immersed in social media from an early age.2017, Virginia Roach, “Foreword”, in Bruce S. Cooper, Carlos R. McCray, Stephen V. Coffin, editors, Why School Leaders Need Vision: Managing Scarcity, Mandates, and Conflicting Goals for Educational...
  2. Alternative letter-case form of zed.

zed meaning in Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam and Nepali

zed in Bengali

জেড

zed in Telugu

జెడ్కి

zed in Malayalam

സെഡ്

zed in Nepali

झेड

Synonyms of zed

Forms of zed

Noun
pluralzeds
pluralZeds
Verb
third-person singular presentzeds
present participlezedding
past participlezedded
pastzedded

Plural of zed: zeds

Origin of zed

From Middle English zed, zedde, zede, from Old French zede, from Late Latin zeta, from Ancient Greek ζῆτα (zêta), from Hebrew ז (zayin) with influence from βῆτα (bêta), ἦτα (êta) and θῆτα (thêta). The letter had a rare usage in Old English, such as in bezt, where it represented "ts" (compare the German, Italian, and Finnish pronunciation of Z). For the sleep sense, see zzz. The zombie sense comes from the initial letter. Doublet of zeta. Cognate to Spanish zeta, German Zett, French zède, Italian zeta, and perhaps Portuguese zê.

Words formed from zed

Phrases with zed

Words that rhyme with zed

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about zed

What does zed mean?
Zed means the name of the Latin script letter Z/z.
What is zed in Bengali?
Zed in Bengali is জেড. See Zed meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is zed?
Zed can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce zed?
Zed is pronounced /zɛd/.
What is the plural of zed?
The plural of zed is zeds.

Words near zed in the dictionary

  1. Zechstein
  2. zechut
  3. Zeckendorf's theorem
  4. Zecolsav
  5. ZECs
  6. zed
  7. zed-bed
  8. zed-beds
  9. Zed-car
  10. Zed-cars
  11. zeda

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: zed (page history and authors); Zed (page history and authors); zed (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); zed (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); zed (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); zed (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-zed.ogg.

Cite this entry: “zed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.