means To move or be arranged in a series of sharp alternating turns, forming a line of repeated angular points rather than a straight path.

from From French zigzag, an 18th-century borrowing that came into French from German Zickzack — a playful reduplication built on Zacke, meaning a jagged point or tooth (as on a saw). The doubled zick-zack imitates the very back-and-forth it describes, the vowel flipping from i to a like a path swerving one way, then the other.