I came in to mention this. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard anybody say it. I thought perhaps it was a Canadian young-people’s thing.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually say “za” IRL. I have heard it a few times on TV and in movies. If I ever heard anyone say “za” in an actual conversation it would be hard to keep from laughing.
It’s covered in “The Official Preppy Handbook” (1980). The Official Preppy Handbook - Wikipedia
Don’t have my copy here at work, but I can look to see what it says when I get home.
Ditto. I thought the term “za” was ubiquitous.
I don’t say “'za” myself, but I’ve heard of the term for a few decades, but mostly used in an ironically hip way.
Yeah, that was the only place I recall ever seeing it used either.
I have read Snow Crash, but apparently missed that little detail.
We called it Za in the early 80’s, too. Here in the DC suburbs of Northern Virginia.
I heard it in the mid-eighties. It sounds as dumb now as it did then.
First place/time I ever saw it was in The Official Preppy Handbook in 1980 (along with 'rents, and calling one’s 'rents “Mummy” and “Fa”–which I actually started doing for awhile, just to be a smartass (hey, I was 16), but the joke was on me and they actually liked it. They both signed cards and letters to me in that way up until they passed away the last couple of years).
I have yet to hear anyone say “za” in real life, but I remember reading it in a Reader’s Digest article as a young kid in the 80’s. I was at my grandparents’ and reading material was scarce.
We called it za in college. That was in 1983.
I’ve said “za” in a tongue-in-cheek manner since the mid-90s, but it’s much older than that, as this thread shows. I’ve use “rents” a little less self-consciously around that same time, too.
Children visiting grandparents are RD’s target audience.
Never heard za anywhere before the Scrabble addition. 30ish relatives seem to use rents a lot: might have heard that in the 70s.
I first heard it in NYC’s E. Village, back in the late 70s. Then, not until the 90s.
I first heard it in college, 1975, from people who grew up in the St. Louis suburbs.
This site on the history of slang has quoted references to “za” as early as 1966. Which means it probably dates back to at least the early sixties.
Merriam Webster places it at 1970. IMHO, Merriam Webster is generally inferior to Webster (they are different) in all aspects except for price. Za Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Dictionary.com places it at 1965-1970: Za Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary: 1965-1970
First heard it mid-80s from a California teen male cousin.
I associate it with the tendency to call rock bands by their “last name” (Floyd, Zeppelin, the Peppers…), which goes back at least to late 1966 (my cite: Charlie Watts’ handwritten liner notes to Between the Buttons, in which he quotes a restless pre-concert crowd to shout “We Want the Stones!”).
(Interestingly, in hip Spanish, they go the other way – it’s “Los Rolling.” Chomsky would probably link this to some deeper structural difference in the language, which also produces “noun, then adjective” as the more common ordering.)
How are people pronouncing “za”? As it’s spelt, to rhyme with “pa”, or like the final syllable of “pizza” (zuh)?
Likewise, rents: “rents” or “ruhnts”?