different between zony vs zonky

English

Etymology

Blend of zebra +? pony

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??ni

Noun

zony (plural zonies)

1. The offspring of a male zebra and a female pony.
   • 1997 April 6, "vicki blakslee" (username), "Zonis zorses and zebras", in rec.equestrian, Usenet:

     > Please tell us how you are doing. What do you have, zony or zorse?

   • 2001 June 27, "Bill Ramsay" (username), "Evolution", in nz.soc.religion, Usenet:

     the old man with the beard decided to lay his hands upon this poor lonely pony, and descended upon her a bounty, a bounty so exceedingly large, that she was blessed with a zony or a pebra, and this doth maketh lots of dosh for the zony’s owner, so that he too can be bountious ^[sic] with the hay from the tv rights, and dost ensure the continuing success of the little darling who shall dwell in the house of hay for evermore.

   • 2010, Marie Lestelle Evrard, You Look Sort of Strange, page v:

     I am a zony. My father is a zebra and my mother is a pony.

References

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?z?.n?/

Noun

zony f

1. inflection of zona:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative/accusative/vocative plural

English

Etymology

zonk +? -y

Pronunciation

Adjective

zonky (comparative more zonky, superlative most zonky)

1. (slang) Very fatigued; zonked.
   • 2005, Susan K. Lorenz, Choose a Miracle (page 93)

     And I feel kind of zonky this morning. Maybe I needed the sleep.

   • 2011, P. J. Hoge, Z: Fourth in the Prairie Preacher Series (page 151)

     She was much better before the medicine made her all zonky.

2. (slang) Weird, odd, eccentric.
   • 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, “Infarcted! Tabescent!” The New York Times, 27 June, 1965,^[2]

     He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms.

   • 1977, Pauline Kael, “Drip-Dry Comedy” in When the Lights Go Down, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, p. 361,^[3]

     […] she doesn’t have the precision of a Jean Arthur, yet she has some of that rueful, fluffy-in-the-head charm of someone whose brains are addled by her sexual impulses, and she adds the blur in the expression and those tremulous, zonky eyes.

   • 1979, Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Chapter One, p. 22,^[4]

     “I tried the State Employment Office and all the guy there does is show you unemployment figures for the county and shakes his head. Makes you feel zonky.”

   • 2005, Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Like Beauty,” p. 242,^[5]

     Gradually Simon’s powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, “Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?”

References