Definition of Z

In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). In American English dialects, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form. Another English dialectal form is izzard, which dates from the mid-18th century, probably deriving from the French et zède, meaning "and z," or else from "s hard." A variant izzed is the predominant form in anglophone South Asia.

Control-Z was one of a handful of keyboard sequences chosen by the program designers at Xerox PARC to control text editing. It is used to undo the last cut-and-paste operation performed by the user. Presumably these particular keystrokes were chosen because of their location on a standard QWERTY keyboard, since the Z (undo),at the left end of the bottom row of the standard QWERTY keyboard. Such usage continues today in many GUI-based operating systems (including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS (although here the Command key is used instead of the control key)) and word processing software. Some software programs also provide a keystroke that functions as the opposite redo operation, which re-applies the last editing operation, generally activated by a control-Y or control-shift-Z.

Z++ is also a version of the C++ programming language.