As initially submitted at https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh/pull/116 :

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As mentioned in the code comment:

   # 1 means last word, 2 second last, etc.

the numeric argument is supposed to be interpreted as an offset from the 
end.

The intended behavior is a lot more useful than the current behavior.


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diff --git a/Functions/Zle/copy-earlier-word 
b/Functions/Zle/copy-earlier-word
index 90e862da3..1262c0c82 100644
--- a/Functions/Zle/copy-earlier-word
+++ b/Functions/Zle/copy-earlier-word
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ setopt typesetsilent
  typeset -g __copyword
  if (( ${NUMERIC:-0} )); then
    # 1 means last word, 2 second last, etc.
-  (( __copyword = ${NUMERIC:-0} ))
+  (( __copyword = -${NUMERIC:-0} ))
    zstyle -s :$WIDGET widget __copywidget
  elif [[ -n $__copyword && $WIDGET = $LASTWIDGET ]]; then
    (( __copyword-- ))

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