Zedonk

Zedonk (pronounced zee-dongk, zee-dawngk or zee-duhngk)

The offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

1970-1975: A portmanteau word created from the first syllables of zebra and donkey (ze(bra) + donk(ey)).  Zedonk is a noun and the noun plural is zedonks; the alternative spelling is zeedonk.  According to zoologists, zedonk & zeedonk are popular creations and the correct terms are Zonkey (a blend of z(ebra) +‎(d)onkey (the noun plural being zonkeys)) if the offspring is sired from a male Zebra and a female Donkey and zebadonk (zeb(ra) + -a- + donk(ey)) if by a male donkey out of a female zebra.  Zonkey is pronounced zong-kee, zawng‐kee or zuhng‐kee.  The advantage of zedonk is it can be used to refer to any hybrid although the correct term is zebroid.  Like mules and ligers, zebroids are sterile creature so unable to procreate and while they can live in the wild, almost all known examples are in captivity.

Zebroids both: A zebadonk (left) and a zonkey (right).  Presumably, experts in such things can tell them apart.

Zebra (any of three species of subgenus Hippotigris (E. grevyi, E. quagga & E. zebra) with black and white stripes and native to Africa)) dates from circa 1600 and was from the Italian zebra, from the Portuguese zebra & zebro (zebra), from the Old Portuguese enzebro, ezebra & azebra (wild ass), from the earlier cebrario & ezebrario, from the Vulgar Latin eciferus, from the Latin equiferus (wild horse), the construct being equus (horse) + ferus (wild).  Being black and white, “zebra” was used in a 1970s CBS TV sitcom as a term of derision used by an African-American character directed at the offspring of an interracial couple (who were actually the first married interracial couple to appear on US network TV) although the word (acknowledged by dictionaries as a vulgar, derogatory, ethnic slur applied to a biracial person, specifically one born to a member of the Sub-Saharan African race and a Caucasian) in that context never gained traction in the general community.  Interestingly, prior to the twentieth century, the word was pronounced with a long initial vowel before the adoption of the initial short vowel.  Despite US phonetic imperialism, this latter use is still most prevalent in the UK and most Commonwealth nations while the long vowel form remains standard in Canadian and US English.

Zebraesque: Lindsay Lohan using Jimmy Choo Zebra Clutch as protection from the paparazzi (left), Lindsay Lohan with blow-up zebra, annual V Magazine black and white party, New York Fashion Week, September 2011 (centre) and Lindsay Lohan in zebra-print dress, GQ Men Of The Year Awards, September 2014.

In many sports, a black and white striped shirts was often reserved for umpires & referees and “zebra” was often applied as a nickname (they attracted other sobriquets too).  In clinical medicine, “a zebra” is slang for an improbable diagnosis, the origin lying to the advice given to medical students to at first instance assume the most common cause for symptoms: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras".)  Because of the distinctive appearance, the zebra lent its name to other branches of zoology.  In Ichthyology, it’s the informal name for a fish, the zebra cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata, native to Central America).  In lepidopterology, the word is applied to any of a number of papilionid butterflies of the subgenus Paranticopsis of the genus Graphium, their distinguishing characteristic being the black and white markings.

Lindsay Lohan on Abbey Road zebra crossing with Natasha Richardson (1963-2009) in The Parent Trap (1998) (left) and one of Sydney City Council’s re-interpretation of the zebra crossing as the “rainbow crossing”, first installed in 2013 to mark Oxford Street’s role in the history of the gay movement.

The zebra crossing (Usually as marked crosswalk or crossing point in the US) (American English) is a pedestrian crossing marked with white stripes, the name adopted because road surfaces tend usually towards black.  Zebra crossings originated in England in the early 1950s to improve pedestrian safety and the idea quickly spread world-wide although as technology evolved, increasingly sophisticated means have been implemented to improve the concept.  In England, they were almost always accompanied by belisha beacons (upright poles on either side of the crossing with an illuminated, orange globe atop and named after Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893–1957; Liberal (and later Tory) MP & cabinet minister) who oversaw their introduction while minister of transport; they’re still used in England and some Commonwealth countries.

Lindsay Lohan meeting zebras while on safari in Mauritius, June 2016.

The origin of donkey ((a domestic animal, Equus asinus asinus, similar to a horse)) is obscure and it first emerged in the late eighteenth century as a slang term.  It’s thought most probably from the Middle English donekie (a miniature dun horse), a double diminutive of the Middle English don, dun & dunne (a name for a dun horse), the construct being dun (a brownish grey colour) + -ock (a diminutive suffix) + -ie (a diminutive suffix).  There was also the Middle English donning (a dun horse) and the English dunnock and donkey in modern use came largely to replace the original term ass (memorable because it’s one of the Bible’s Ten Commandments that (thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass) because of the homophony and partial merger with arse.

1955 Daimler DK400 Golden Zebra.  The last of the Docker Daimlers, the Golden Zebra was a two-door fixed head coupé (FHC) with coachwork by Hooper, built on the existing DK400 chassis.  The interior was finished with an African theme, the dashboard of ivory and the upholstery in zebra-skin while external metal trim was gold-plated.  Lady Docker personally chose the zebra skin, claiming mink was unpleasantly hot.  It was first shown at the 1955 Paris Motor Show, the French apparently appalled and it's of note this stylistic relic appeared in the same building used for the debut of the Citroën DS.

In idiomatic use, donkey was used to suggest “a stubborn person”, something extended with greater frequency to “mule” and it meant also “someone bad at something”, a use which seems to have begun at the poker table but applied also in many fields to both people and machines which perform less impressively than was hoped.  In admiralty jargon a donkey-engine was a small, auxiliary engine used to run things like pumps or winches and the term was later picked up by the hot-rod community in the US where it was shortened to “donk” and applied to engines large and small (although in that community the attitude was usually “the bigger the better”).  In the sail age, donkey in admiralty slang was a box or chest (especially a toolbox) and it’s though donkey-engine evolved from this because the small engines were often installed in the spots where the boxes sat.

Big donk: Scania DC16 (16.4 litre (1000 cubic inch) diesel V8).