Word
zee
US/ˈzi/
UK/zˈiː/
Definitions
01the letter Z
n. the name of the letter Z in American English.
n. the standard American English name for the twenty-sixth letter of the Latin alphabet.
“In the United States, children sing the alphabet song ending with 'x, y, and zee'.”
“The phonetic distinction between the American 'zee' and the British 'zed' is one of the most recognizable markers of regional dialect.”
American English
Usage
Used as a countable noun when referring to the character itself.
Synonyms
02sleep
n. a way to talk about sleep, usually used in the plural as 'some zees'.
n. a colloquial term for sleep, typically used in the plural to represent the sound of snoring.
“I need to catch some zees before my long flight tomorrow morning.”
“After a grueling double shift at the hospital, he was desperate to head home and catch a few zees.”
Informal · American English
Usage
Almost exclusively used in the plural form 'zees' within the idiom 'catch some zees'.
03to sleep
v. to take a nap or sleep for a while.
v. to sleep or nap; often used intransitively in informal contexts.
“He was zeeing on the sofa while the movie was playing.”
“The passenger in the seat next to me spent the entire duration of the flight zeeing loudly.”
Informal · Dialect
Usage
This verb form is less common than the noun idiom and is often associated with specific regional dialects.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
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 adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.