zee
/ziː/noun, verb, article
zee is spelled Z-E-E: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 23,536th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, zee means “The name of the Latin script letter Z/z” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of zee is zees.
How many letters and syllables are in zee?
| Letters | 3: Z-E-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.4 times per million words; the 23,536th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is zee?
Zee appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 23,536th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce zee?
- /ziː/
- /ˈzeɪː/
Zee has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-zee.ogg, En-ca-zee.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with zee
Also written: the.
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with zee?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as zee.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: eze.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of zee
- zees plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- zeeing participle, present
- zeed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does zee mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The name of the Latin script letter Z/z.
Thus first C checks to see if ex and wye are equal. The resulting value of 1 or 0 (true or false) then is compared to the value of zee.
- 2
Something Z-shaped. Found in compounds.
zee-bar.
- 3
colloquialSleep.
Time to get some zees.
verb
- 1
USinformalTo sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.)
- 2
USrareTo zigzag; to move with sharp alternating turns.
noun
- 1
Alternative letter-case form of zee.
article
- 1
USPronunciation spelling of the, representing primarily French or German accented English.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Zee in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense name of the letter Z, z:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does zee come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).