means A ziggurat is an ancient Mesopotamian temple tower built as a series of stacked, ever-smaller terraces with a shrine at the top.

from From Akkadian 'ziqqurratu,' meaning a temple-tower or pinnacle, which comes from the verb 'zaqaru,' to build high or raise up. The word traveled to us through scholarship rather than speech, dug up alongside the brick mounds of Sumer and Babylon — so when you say it, you're using the same root the builders used for the act of stacking heaven a little closer.