<z- (chosen as representing a sound not used in other pronouns) + ‑e (in hepron., shepron.1); influenced by Germansie she, they (pronounced /ziː/ : see hoopron. and hipron.2, respectively).Compare s/hepron.2
Meaning & use
1864–
Used as a gender-neutral third person singular subject pronoun. Cf. s/hepron.2
In later contextual use, especially with reference to individuals who do not identify themselves as either male or female, but rather as another or no gender, or as a combination of genders, as distinct from use as a term for unknown individuals of unspecified gender.
The suggestion of your correspondent ‘Philologus’ respecting the poverty of our language in its need of an epicene pronoun, is one that must have occurred to every intelligent person... The only points to be considered are, the selection of a suitable word—and I think that either ‘ve’ or ‘ze’ would equally answer the requirement—and the method of its propagation.
Ladies Repository September 567/2
1972
Once we are committed to ‘ze’ for the subjective, the other forms follow fairly easily.
S. Polgar in Newsletter Amer. Anthropol. Association September 18/1
1985
My nomination? Zhe. (The zh is pronounced like the z in azure.) Example: If a person saw an automobile accident, what should zhe do?
Re: Non-sexist Lang. (Hist.) in net.nlang 14 June (Usenet newsgroup, accessed 16 Jan. 2017)
1996
I don't have a personal stake in whether the trans liberation movement results in..gender-neutral pronouns, like the ones, such as ze (she/he) and hir (her/his), being experimented with in cyberspace.
L. Feinberg, Transgender Warriors Preface p. x
2016
It seems entirely possible that in my daughter's lifetime, gender-specific pronouns will sound as archaic as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, supplanted by ‘ze’ or ‘zir’ or some neologism of the future.
Washington Post (Nexis) 10 January (Outlook section) b3
Pronunciation
British English
/ziː/
zee
U.S. English
/zi/
zee
Variant: zhe
British English
/ʒi/
zhee
U.S. English
/ʒi/
zhee
Consonants
ppea
ttea
kkey
bbuy
ddye
ɡguy
tʃchore
dʒjay
ffore
θthaw
ssore
ʃshore
vvee
ðthee
zzee
ʒbeige
xloch
hhay
llay
ɬrhingyll
rray
wway
jyore
mmay
nnay
ŋsing
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛtl/ but /ˈpɛtl̩i/.
Vowels
iːfleece
ihappy
ɪkit
ɛdress
atrap, bath
ɑːstart, palm, bath
ɒlot
ɔːthought, force
ʌstrut
ʊfoot
uːgoose
əletter
əːnurse
ɪənear
ɛːsquare
ʊəcure
eɪface
ʌɪpride
aʊmouth
əʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ãgratin
ɒ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Some consonants can take the function of the vowel in unstressed syllables. Where necessary, a syllabic marker diacritic is used, hence /ˈpɛd(ə)l/ but /ˈpɛdl̩i/.
Vowels
ifleece, happy
ɪkit
ɛdress
ætrap, bath
ɑlot, palm, cloth, thought
ɑrstart
ɔcloth, thought
ɔrnorth, force
ʊfoot
ugoose
əstrut, comma
ərnurse, letter
ɪ(ə)rnear
ɛ(ə)rsquare
ʊ(ə)rcure
eɪface
aɪpride
aʊmouth
oʊgoat
ɔɪvoice
ɑ̃gratin
æ̃salon
ᵻ(/ɪ/-/ə/)
ᵿ(/ʊ/-/ə/)
Other symbols
The symbol ˈ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with primary stress.
The symbol ˌ at the beginning of a syllable indicates that that syllable is pronounced with secondary stress.
Round brackets ( ) in a transcription indicate that the symbol within the brackets is optional.
Simple text respell breaks words into syllables, separated by a hyphen. The syllable which carries the primary stress is written in capital letters. This key covers both British and U.S. English Simple Text Respell.
Consonants
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their standard English values
gguy
jjay
yyore
chchore
khloch
shshore
ththaw
dhthee
zhbeige
Vowels
atrap
ahpalm
airsquare
arstart
arrcarry (British only)
awthought
ayface
a(ng)gratin
edress
eefleece
eerdeer
errmerry
ikit
ighpride
irrmirror
olot (British only)
ohgoat
oogoose
oorcure
orforce
orrsorry (British only)
owmouth
oyvoice
o(ng)salon
ustrut
uhletter
urnurse
urrhurry
uufoot
Forms
Variant forms
1900s–
sie, xe, ze, zee, zhe ( British English /ʒi/ (zhee) , U.S. English /ʒi/ (zhee) ), zie
Frequency
ze typically occurs about 0.7 times per million words in modern written English.
ze is in frequency band 4, which contains words occurring between 0.1 and 1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of ze, pron., 1860–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.