Date:  Wed, 28 Jan 1998 13:27:44 -0500
From:  Larry Horn <laurence.horn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "zephyr" (= nothing)

At 9:08 AM -0500 1/28/98, Gregory {Greg} Downing wrote:
>...
>Maybe (cipher) + (the idea that some nothing-words begin with z [zero, zip,
>the obscurely-derived but probably zero-related zilch]) + (zephyr's
>connotations of lightness/nothingness) = zepyhr-as-zero????
>
The second is the point I was going to make before Greg (not for the first
time) beat me to the punch. I'm quite confident in speculating that the
z-as-in-'zero' is at least part of the story, although the cypher subplot
is interesting too. One of those antilogies we were throwing around a few
years ago, since a cipher/cypher is originally (from the Arabic, and before
that the Sanksrit) a zero (literally or figuratively) but then later any
numeral figure, or any character, or code.

Larry