zzz?

[Garson O'Toole]

I do not know the best way to trace the history of ZZZ as a signifier
for sleep in comics. But absent additional responses here is another
comment.

Within the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database some of the panels
of comics are placed in separate entries and assigned names like
"Comic 2 -- No Title" and "Comic 7 -- No Title". ProQuest performs OCR
(optical character recognition) on these comic strips but the results
are poor. When I searched for the terms "ZZZ" and "ZZZZ" within this
restricted set (Document Title: Comic) almost all the matches were
false.

Nevertheless, I did find an example of ZZZZ emerging from a sleeping
character in a newspaper comic strip dated 1927. The individual strip
was titled "The Hypnotist" and the series was called "Winnie Winkle,
The Breadwinner". The strip panels depict five instances of sleeping
characters with Zs and dashes in thought balloons or nearby, e.g.,
ZZ-ZZ-Z. Other examples can probably be acquired with this type of
strategy.

Cite: 1927 March 9, Chicago Daily Tribune, Comic 7, "Winnie Winkle,
The Breadwinner: The Hypnotist", Page 33, Tribune Publishing Company,
Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)


In 1921 ZZZZ appears in the title of a comic, but the referent is the
sound of a mosquito. The term does not occur within the comic itself.

Cite: 1921 July 23, Chicago Daily Tribune, Comic 2, "The Gumps -
ZZZZ!!!", Page 7, Tribune Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois.
(ProQuest Historical Newspapers)


In 1923 BZZZ-ZZZ is used to represent gossiping. Several instances are
located within speech balloons. The number of Zs and dashes is
variable.

Cite: 1923 January 24, Chicago Daily Tribune, Comic 6, "Winnie Winkle,
The Breadwinner: So This Is Dinkeyville!", Page 19, Tribune Publishing
Company, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)

Others may have written material relevant to your topic in histories
of the semiotics or iconography of comics. There is a discussion in
the archive of this mailing list about the history of the speech
balloon or speech bubble.

It might be possible to find useful material by searching Google Books
to find topical books or chapters. Perhaps keywords like the following
in combination or others that you think of might help: history, comic,
cartoon,  onomatopoeic, "onomatopoeic words", semiotics, semantics,
zzz, zzzz, sleep, asleep.

Good luck,
Garson

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: zzz?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here's a possible "when." Back in the '40's, the speech-balloon often,
> or even usually, contained not only Z's, but also a crosscut handsaw
> sawing a log. Snoring and sawing wood have been equated at least since
> 1912.
>
> http://goo.gl/u71zC
>
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"ā€“ā€“a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:44 PM, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Ā  Ā  Ā  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Ā  Ā  Ā  James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>> Subject: Ā  Ā  Ā zzz?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> If I were to want to trace the history of the use of ZZZ for snoring
>> in cartoons, what would be my best way of doing that? I have to
>> assume that there's something better than dumpster-diving old comic
>> books (wherever they even may be found), but I'm not entirely sure
>> where to start looking.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> James Harbeck
>>
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