It seems like just a few weeks ago I first heard someone refer to pizza as “za”. Now it seems I’m running into za everywhere. Is it a new phenomenon? Was there a point source that started it?
Onions, 'shrooms, and anchovies on mine.
I’ve heard since the late '80s. It was noted as part of college slang I think by William Safire.
Also “rents” for “parents.”
I’ve never heard it.
I’ve not heard this. if someone asked me if I wanted a slice of za, I wouldn’t know what the heck they were talking about.
Well, I guess I would know now, but not a few minutes ago.
New to me, and I’m usually remarkably hep to the jive.
Za and rents came my way in reading The Mushroom Kid, the autobio of the physics student who designed an atomic bomb and ran into all kinds of trouble… and was also a campus pizza delivery guy. Maybe 1980, 1981?
ETA: 1978, it’s Mushroom: The Story of the A-Bomb Kid, and his name was John Aristotle Phillips.
We used za and rents in college in the 80’s as well. There’s even a nice pizza place near me called Za.
Graduated high school in '83 - deep in the rural Maine woods. We had za with the rents all the time back then.
Early 1980’s, the college persons from California.
I could be off by a few years, but I think I saw za as a stand-in for pizza about the time I saw names like Topher (for Christopher) popping up. Since Topher Grace’s first credit as an actor is 2000 (maybe 1998-2006 for his sitcom) that’s all I have to hang it on.
How many such names are there now?
Ley for Dudley
Liam for William (must go back to the Middle Ages, right?)
Neth for Kenneth
Beth for Elizabeth (Shakespeare’s day?)
The local pizza place in my college town was nicknamed Za’s. I don’t remember its actual name. We never called the food itself “za”, though.
Got to be real hard to top!
What if Dick Clark had decided Chard would be better than Dick?
I grew up in the 90s and earnestly calling pizza 'za would make you seem like an embarrassingly out of touch person trying to be hip to the young generation.
Champaign?
Right about then, it would have been last-week’s-jargon and thus painful to hear used. Now it’s one with twenty-three-skiddoo, bee’s knees and mod.
Before you click on “Oh, you Kid”, “Hubba Hubba”, and “23-Skidoo” – please hazard a guess as to when that thread dates from!
06-01-2001, 12:54 PM
Spectre of Pithecanthropus
Ummm… I think we used za back in college in the late 60s.
I can remember reading articles in the 80s that claimed za was a hot new slang term for pizza, but in nearly 30 years since then I have never once heard it in the wild.
There were a few people at the college in the NE US I taught at in the late 70s who insisted that the proper local term was “za”. We considered them affected bozos.
I did a crossword the other day that used it in a clue. Possibly the first time I encountered the term since that era.