Yvetot, an old town of France, in the dept. of Seine-Inférieure, 24 miles NW. of Rouen by rail. There are manufactures of linen, cotton, calico, and a trade in cattle and agricultural produce. The court and gaol occupy the site of a Bernardine monastery (1650-1781). Pop. 7007. The town and territory of Yvetot was long a semi-sovereign principality, and the Lord of Yvetot was popularly styled 'Roi d'Yvetot.' This singular dignity was formally abrogated in 1681, but the people of Yvetot retained some privileges till the Revolution. Beranger's well-known song, Le Roi d'Yvetot (1812), translated by Thackeray, was a satire on Napoleon. See a history by Beaucousin (1884).

Z

the last letter in our alphabet, is derived, through the Greek zeta, from zayin, the seventh Semitic letter. The Semitic form was ⲏ, which is also the Greek lapidary and numismatic form. But though in form and station zeta corresponds to zayin, yet through some confusion san acquired the name of zayin (ds), and zeta that of tsade (ts). In the old Italic abecedaria the letter Z occupies, like zeta, the seventh place, and the letter survived in Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan; but, as the sound did not exist in Latin, the letter was discarded, not later than the 3d century B.C., when its alphabetic station was usurped by the new letter G (see 'G'). In the 1st century B.C. it was reintroduced from Greece in the uncial form Z, in order to transliterate Greek words. Together with the symbol, the name zed was borrowed from that of the Greek zeta, whereas if the letter had been continuously retained in the Latin alphabet the name, following the analogy of the other Latin letters, would have been ez. It is curious that zed, the only Semitic letter-name that we retain, should have belonged originally to a Phœnician letter which has disappeared from every European alphabet. It can hardly be said that z was an Anglo-Saxon letter, as it is only used in biblical names, such as Zaccheus; even now it appears in very few native English words, the sound, when we have it, being usually represented by s, as in the words 'Wednesday,' 'thousand,' 'tongs,' 'weeds,' 'tease,' 'cheese,' 'knees,' 'these,' 'his' and 'is.' We use it chiefly for words of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic origin, such as 'zoology,' 'zephyr,' 'zeal,' 'zany,' 'Zedekiah,' 'Zebulon,' 'azure,' 'zenith,' 'magazine,' 'gauze,' 'zero,' 'zodiac,' or 'gazelle.' Owing to French influence it has taken the place of s in a few English words, such as 'dizzy,' 'frozen,' 'hazel,' 'sneeze,' and 'sneeze;' and it represents a French s in 'hazard,' 'lizard,' and 'buzzard.' It is intrusive in 'citizen,' from the French citoyen. The sound of our z is a voiced sibilant, either a voiced s as in 'zeal,' or a voiced sh as in 'azure,' French sounds which we borrowed. The value in Latin and Greek is doubtful: probably it was either dz or zd. By Grimm's law a German z answers to an English t and a Latin d, as in the words zwei, two, duo; or zahn, tooth, dens. The cedilla (ç) is a 'little zed,' as is implied by the Italian name zediglia, from zeticula.