The question is answers on the Straight Dope.
From the piece...
Z isn’t associated with sleeping, specifically, but
rather with snoring. You may be one of the fortunate few having no
personal acquaintance with this phenomenon. I don’t have much
familiarity with it either, but mostly because I’m asleep when I do it.
Ms. Adams tells me Z doesn’t adequately convey the experience, which she
says is like hearing a drowning man being eaten by a squid. Considering
that a realistic representation would be something like
gasp-choke-grunt-chew-smack, I think we can agree a simple Z is good
enough.
Z as shorthand for snoring is a relatively recent invention. It came into common use with the advent of comics.
Figuring this out took a while. The Oxford English Dictionary
wasn’t much help. It credits the first use of Z to signify buzzing to
Henry Thoreau, who in 1852 wrote, “The dry z-ing of the locust is
heard.” However, the first use of “z-z-z” to represent snoring given in
the OED is from a 1924 publication by the American Dialect Society,
implying it was in popular use some time before.
No comments:
Post a Comment