Other forms: zigzags, zigzagging, zigzagged
A zigzag is a line that keeps turning sharply, left then right then left, instead of going straight. Lightning in a drawing, the path that switches back and forth up a steep hill, the stitch a sewing machine makes along a raw edge.
The word does three jobs without changing shape: a zigzag of white paint, a zigzag pattern on a jumper, and the road zigzags up to the village. You zigzag when you are avoiding something - a rabbit zigzags across a field, a skier zigzags down the slope - and the reason is the same in both cases: sharp turns are hard to follow. The verb doubles its g, giving zigzagged and zigzagging. British writing sometimes hyphenates it as zig-zag, and both spellings are read the same way.
1nounzigzagA line or path made of sharp turns, first one way and then the other.
“The lightning left a zigzag of white across the sky.”
2verbmoveTo move forward in sharp alternating turns.
“The path zigzags up the hillside to the chapel.”
3adjectivefirstHaving sharp turns first one way and then the other.
“She wore a jumper with a red zigzag pattern across the chest.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Zigzag turns up in English in 1712, borrowed straight from French zigzag, which had appeared there fifty years earlier. The French may have taken it from a Germanic source, perhaps the Walloon ziczac. The word imitates the shape it names: two syllables that step apart, i then a.
wa
ziczac
French
zigzag
English, today
zigzag
Attested from 1712. Borrowed from French zigzag (attested from 1662), possibly from a gem source via wa ziczac (although {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA