The noun ζιζανιον (zizanion) refers to a kind of unwanted weed (a.k.a. tare), and occurs in the New Testament only in the Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13:25-30 and 13:36-43). Our noun occurs 8 times; see full concordance.

This familiar Parable of the Tares is based on the crime (incorporated in several ancient legal codes) of contaminating the field of one's competitor with so-called false-wheat; an inedible look-alike that would ruin the victim's harvest.

The weed of choice would have been darnel, which looks a lot like wheat but when consumed causes a potentially fatal nausea. The Latin name of this plant is lolium temulentum, with lolium relating to the word latrine and temulentum meaning drunken. Besides bankrupting the owner of the contaminated lot, this crime could also result in the death of innocent consumers, or even incapacitate an entire local population. This means that it could be used as an act of war, or a first assault of an ensuing battle. The act of sowing tares in someone else's field reminds of salting the battlefield, which is what Abimelech did to the town of Shechem (Judges 9:45). This in turn reminds the much earlier circumcision of the men of Shechem, which Levi and Simeon insisted on so that they could kill them all, while they were inconvenienced (Genesis 34:24-25).

Even though the Bible often mentions oxen (1 Corinthians 9:9), the Bible is predominantly concerned with the development of information technology — and in Biblical times that covered everything from the development of nouns and names (Genesis 2:19-20), to script, paper and the systematic postal service — and the effects of information technology on the human mind (see our article on YHWH). Since seeds of grain may either represent words (what a human consciousness is made of; Matthew 13:3) or a whole human self (that has to die to bear fruit; John 12:24), the false-wheats not merely represent false dogma but also (or more so), inefficiencies in data storage and retrieval.

Our noun ζιζανιον (zizanion) is nearly certainly a synthetic joke-word, like gobblygook or flapdoodle (or wonk-weed). It's equally obvious based on the Aramaic noun זונין (zonin), meaning false-wheat, which in turn is identical to the Aramaic version of the Greek noun meaning belt or girdle, namely ζωνη (zone). This noun זונין (zonin), meaning false-wheat, stems from the verb זנה (zanah), meaning to fornicate or be a harlot or a degenerate (more specifically: someone who routinely adjusts their fluidic allegiances according to their shifting interests). Our Greek word ζιζανιον (zizanion) appears to be formed from our noun זונין (zonin), wavering thing, prefixed with the noun זיז (ziz), which denotes either roving or roaming things (migrating animals, or in this case, bad seeds or else really bad ideas), or else proverbially abundant things.

All this means that our noun ζιζανιον (zizanion) literally means "abundantly roaming promiscuous things," and obviously covers all the many drifting contaminants one wants to keep out of any field that is dedicated to the harmonic Oneness of All Things — see our article on the verb αινεω (aineo), to tell about or speak of.