Dear Colleagues:
I have just received this email from Nottingham City Council. Can anyone advise?
Subject: Etymological query relating to zickzack
The City council is on the point of launching a major campaign on harassment
and discrimination for our 14,000 employees. The principle campaign vehicle
is a fold-up leaflet that opens out like a zig-zag and is therefore called
'the Zig-zag'. The whole campaign is to be called the zig-zag campaign.
At the last minute someone has suggested that the term zig-zag may not be
appropriate because it may be derived from the the name of the tower of
Babel, which was a stepped pyramid, or ziggurat. The suggestion is that if
this is the case the campaign may be offensive to Rastafarians as any
mention of Babylon would be very negative for them.
The Oxford Dictionary of English etymology says that the term zig-zag came
into English via French from German in the c18th. It describes the German
work zickzack as a 'symobolic formation', which I have taken to mean
something to an onomatopaeia. But a symbolic formation could possibly be an
academic coinage deriving from the Akkadian word ziggurat, could it?
I am not a German speaker and I have no way of getting further to the heart
of this arcane issue. Can anyone help with this? I am sorry but we
have print dealines waiting for an answer to this, so if you can shed any
light on the point it would need to be today if possible.
Thank you,
Industrial Relations Officer
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