A weevil gets the last word in the dictionary
Samara St. Louis, an eighth-grader from Saskatoon, was cramming for a spelling bee in 2012, when she stumbled upon a word that quickly became her favourite.
“It’s the last word in the dictionary and it’s fun to say and it’s fun to spell,” she told the Post Ledger.
She was speaking of “Zyzzyva,” an odd little word that often appeared as the final entry in many English dictionaries.
But the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered by many as the standard-bearer of dictionaries, ended with “zythum,” which referred to an ancient Egyptian malt beer.
That’s no longer the case. The dictionary just announced several new additions to its vast pages, including St. Louis’s favourite word, “Zyzzyva,” which now has the unique distinction of being the OED’s last word.
It’s a noun, pronounced “zih-zihvah” and defined as “a genus of tropical weevils (family Curculionidae) native to South America and typically found on or near palm trees.” A weevil is a sort of beetle, generally small and herbivorous.
It’s not likely you’d find Zyzzyvain in your home. The insect was discov- ered in Brazil in 1922 by Irish entomologist Thomas Lincoln Casey, who gave it the strange name. The origin of the word is unknown, and it seemingly has no etymology.
Many different theories exist, however, which the OED listed in its blog.
Some think Casey was attempting to create a word that, when spoken aloud, mimicked the sound made by these insects. Others, however, think Casey was merely having a laugh and came up with the strange combination of letters — so many z’s! — as a practical joke, knowing it would then be the final word in most English dictionaries.
Indeed, others beside St. Louis seemed to have embraced the world.
A San Francisco arts and letters journal called Zyzzyva was founded in 1985 that was one of the first in the U.S. to publish Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. This certainly seems to be connected to the bug, as images of a weevil with a “Z” slapped on its fat abdomen appears across the journal’s website. If nothing else, Scrabble players should take note. The word, without special boosters, is worth 43 points.