Z - I've got Zilch...I'm gonna Zonk out and catch some Zzzzz's

...As in lots of possibilities for how the word Zilch came to be.  You didn't think I'd let you down, did you?

Copied From:  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-zil1.htm

1.  I've got zilch! 

Meaning:  nothing.

It appears first in print in the mid 1960s (the first example in the big Oxford English Dictionary is from a slang collection at the University of South Dakota dated Winter 1966).

Some reference books suggest the Ballyhoo humour magazine, first published in 1931, was a possible source. This had as one of its characters a Mr Zilch (actually there were several of them: the front page of the first issue advertised “President Henry P. Zilch. Chairman of the Board Charles D. Zilch. Treasurer Otto Zilch”). The character was not actually pictured in cartoons in the magazine, but was obviously present, so he was “the little man who wasn’t there”.

This name may have come from college slang of the 1920s, in which Joe Zilsch was the archetypal average student — the average Joe, in fact, marching in the same column as Joe Blow, Joe Doakes and the more recent Joe Sixpack. That sense is still around and sometimes used in the same way as John Doe, to refer to an individual who is otherwise unidentified. In the 1920s, however, Joe Zilsch could also be an insignificant person or (in modern terms) a loser. The spelling suggests a European origin (and Zilsch is a real German surname of Slavic origin). The name was probably borrowed with zero and nil in the back of the creator’s mind.

But the years between the 1930s and the 1960s are a complete blank as far as the development of the word is concerned, so we have no way of confirming that this is the source. Indeed, the long gap might be indirect evidence that it isn’t. Alas, etymology is not an exact science, so this is yet another occasion on which I just have to say “Origin unknown”.

These aren't origins so much as hypotheses and suppositions, but...

2.  I went home and zonked out.

Meaning:  to put in a stupor, pass out.

Origins:  from 1950 it meant to hit hard, used in comics (onomatopoeia), and then, later, it meant to put in a stupor, as in we were hit hard and we zonked out.  

3.  I'm going to go home and catch some zzzzz's.

Meaning:   went to sleep and snored.

Origin:  used in comics, derives from the sound of snoring with it's regular coarse vibration inspiring the common metaphor of "sawing logs" in ones sleep. The 'Z' represent the tooth pattern of a saw or the saw-tooth sound wave corresponding to the sound of snoring. 

And can I just say ZOMG, I DID IT!

Thanks to everyone whose stopped by...hopefully not for the last time.  :D

Look for the winner of the Oh, My Hero! Blog Hop later today!