Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''zayn'' 𐤆, Hebrew ''zayīn'' , Aramaic ''zain'' 𐡆, Syriac ''zayn'' ܙ, and Arabic ''zāy'' . It represents the sound . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ),

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''z''

, Latin Z, and

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

Ze З, as well as Ж.

Origin

The Proto-Sinaitic

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may have been called , may not have been based on a hieroglyph, and may have depicted a "

fetter Legcuffs are physical restraints used on the ankles of a person to allow walking only with a restricted stride and to prevent running and effective physical resistance. Frequently used alternative terms are leg cuffs, (leg/ankle) shackles, foot ...

". An alternative view is that it is based on the "

copper ingot Copper is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductility, ductile metal with very high thermal conductivity, thermal and electrical conductivity. A fre ...

" hieroglyph ( 𓈔) in the form of an axeblade, after noting that the name "zayin" has roots in Aramaic to refer to "

Arms Arms or ARMS may refer to: *Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to: People * Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader Coat of arms or weapons *Armaments or weapons **Fi ...

," " Armor," and " Metal used for arms."Cross, F. M. (1980) Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 238, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/1356511 The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Hebrew, ' () means "weapon", the verb ' () means "to arm", and the verb ' () means "to arm oneself".

Arabic zāy

The letter is named . It has two forms, depending on its position in the word: The similarity to ' 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 and . The same letter has another name – '' že'' () – in a number of languages, such as 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: In modern Hebrew, the combination (zayin followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote as in ''vion''.

Significance

Numerical value (gematria)

In gematria, zayin represents the number

seven 7 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 7 or seven may also refer to: * AD 7, the seventh year of the AD era * 7 BC, the seventh year before the AD era * The month of July Music Artists * Seven (Swiss singer) (born 1978), a Swiss recording artist ...

, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years it means 7000 (i.e. in numbers would be the future date 7754).

Use in Torah scroll

Zayin, in addition to ʻayin, gimel, teth, nun,

shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

, and

tzadi Tsade (also spelled , , , , tzadi, sadhe, tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ṣādē , Hebrew ṣādi , Aramaic ṣāḏē , Syriac ṣāḏē ܨ, Ge'ez ṣädäy ጸ, and Arabic . Its oldest phoneti ...

, is one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a '' tagin'') when written in a

Sefer Torah A ( he, סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה; "Book of Torah"; plural: ) or Torah scroll is a handwritten copy of the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses (the first books of the Hebrew Bible). The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Tora ...

(Torah scroll).

Syriac zain

Zain is a consonant with the sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.

Character encodings

References

{{Northwest Semitic abjad Phoenician alphabet Arabic letters Hebrew letters Urdu letters