Editing Z (section)

===Old English===
[[Old English]] used ''S'' alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced [[sibilant]]. The Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written with ''Z'' but with ''G'' or ''I''. The successive changes can be seen in the [[Doublet (linguistics)|doublet]] forms ''jealous'' and ''zealous''. Both of these come from a late Latin ''{{lang|la|zelosus}}'', derived from the imported Greek {{lang|grc|ζῆλος}} ''{{lang|grc-Latn|zêlos}}''. The earlier form is ''jealous''; its initial sound is the {{IPAblink|dʒ}}, which developed to [[French language|Modern French]] {{IPAblink|ʒ}}. [[John Wycliffe]] wrote the word as {{lang|ang|gelows}} or {{lang|ang|ielous}}.

''Z'' at the end of a word was pronounced ''ts'', as in English ''assets'', from [[Old French]] ''{{lang|fro|asez}}'' "enough" ([[French language|Modern French]] ''{{lang|fr|assez}}''), from [[Vulgar Latin]] ''{{lang|la|ad satis}}'' ("to sufficiency").<ref>{{OED|asset}}</ref>