101 YEARS OLD AND STILL NEGOTIATING SEPARATION...
PLEASE forgive me for coming back to the topic of Brexit negotiations, which I fear we are all getting tired of hearing about, but I believe I have discovered a comparable separation that became equally mired in its own intricacies. I refer to the liberation of zig from zag from their former union of zig-zag.
The Oxford English Dictionary dates the earliest recorded use of ‘zig-zag’ to 1712, while giving the first use of ‘zag’ as 1793 and ‘zig’ as surprisingly late as 1969.
Curiously, however, ‘zig’ is defined as “To make a movement or direction inclined at an angle to that indicated by zag”, while ‘zag’ is “Used to express a movement or direction inclined at an angle to that indicated by ‘zig’.”
It may therefore seem reasonable to conclude that zaggers spent the 176 years between 1793 and 1969 not knowing which way to turn having been advised to move in a direction that had not yet been defined. Are we to assume that these 176 years were some sort of negotiated transition phase between the ziggers and zaggers before they separated fully?
If only things were so simple! For the full story reveals complications that can hardly have been foreseen when Zigzit and Zagzit (as the liberation camps came to be known) were first suggested and voted for.
As the OED itself records, Robert Burns himself used both ‘zig’ and ‘zag’ separately in 1793, referring to the ephemeral nature of his own letters as “zig, here; zag, there.” In this case, however, the OED clearly sees Burns’s zig and zag as parts of a conjoined zigzag and not independent entities. The first truly independent use of zag they record is from an 1899 novel Shameless Wayne by Halliwell Sutcliffe who wrote “his steel zags down like lightning”. Even that, however, leaves a 70 year transition period before zig gained a comparable autonomy.
I think it highly probable that the negotiations leading to an agreement of that long transition resolved two particularly difficult sticking points. First, the question of whether ‘zig’ or ‘zag’ should gain independence first, the honour finally going to ‘zag’ in order to redress the historic unfairness caused by ‘zig’ always preceding ‘zag’ in any ‘zig-zag’. Second, the question of what to do with the hyphens that would be dropped from every zig-zag when its components separated.
A complete solution to these vexed topics was only finally realised in 1996 with the release of Wannabe by the Spice Girls. As you will no doubt recall, this song included the line, “I wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zig-ah.”
By including two independent zigs and no fewer than three liberated hyphens, this may be seen as one zig for each wanna and a hyphen for every really, as profound a statement of the women’s liberation ideals of the Spice Girls as one could wish for, completed by a satisfied ‘ah’ of achievement.
We still await the complementary “zag-a-zag-ah”, to zag where the Spice Girls zigged, but that is surely only a matter of time and more delicate transition negotiations.