What is "zayin"

n. The seventh letter of many Semitic alphabets (Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and others).

n. the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet

Zayin (also spelled zain or zayn or simply zay) is the seventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Zayin , Hebrew 'Zayin , Aramaic Zain , Syriac Zayn ܙ, and Arabic Zayn . It represents the sound .

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z , Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З.

The Phoenician letter appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. In Biblical Hebrew, means "sword", and the verb means "to arm". In modern Hebrew slang, means " penis" and is a vulgar term which generally means to perform sexual intercourse (similar to " fuck"), although the older meaning survives in ("armed struggle") , ("armed forces") , and ("armed, i.e., reinforced concrete"). The Proto-Sinaitic glyph may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a " manacle".