Z/Z’s

The last letter of the alphabet, pronounced ‘zed’ in Britain and Commonwealth Countries but ‘zee’ in America, is also slang for sleep when pluralised as zeds. Bagging, blowing, catching, copping, pushing and stacking zeds are all slang expressions for getting some sleep and date from the latter half of the 20th century. The derivation is that zzzz or a number of zeds illustrated in this way have appeared in comic strips when characters were sleeping. Thought balloons, filled with zzzz coming out of characters’ heads, gave rise to these expressions in the latter half of the 20th century.