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zigzag

 


palavra
who knows which language is the origin of this word?
devotchka
This term seems to have come into English from France. The reduplication is suggestive of alternation, as with other phrases of that sort, e.g. tick-tock and see-saw.

In 1712, John James published a translation of the French gardening writer Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond's Theory and practice of gardening. In that is included:

"Steps of Grass laid in Zic-Zac" and "Chevrons, or Checks of Grass in Zig-Zac."

James added the note - "The French call this an Allée en Zic-Zac, for its Likeness to a Machine so called". What machine he meant we don't know.

Zic-zac soon began to be written as zig-zag. The first record we have of that is in Johnathan Swift's prose poem My Lady's Lamentation, 1728:

How proudly he talks
Of zigzags and walks

It didn't take long for the term to begin to be used in a figurative sense, i.e. in reference to any continual changes. For example, in William Cowper's Conversation, 1781:

"Though such continual zig-zags in a book, Such drunken reelings, have an awkward look."


Laughing
Gushe
In Dutch we also use this word.. Smile

It means like euhm.. "from one side to the other" Smile
When someone is driving from one side of the road to the other side; he is "aan het zigzaggen" Smile [To be zigzagging Razz]


~Gushe
palavra
in turkish also we use 'zik zak'
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