diff --git a/home/shrc b/home/shrc
index 978f234..1dfbf82 100644
--- a/home/shrc
+++ b/home/shrc
@@ -4,6 +4,13 @@
 unset FANCY; _=: && [ -z $_ ] && FANCY=1 || FANCY=0 # detect zsh and bash
 if [ "$FANCY" = 0 ]; then . ~/.prep; fi # handle stuff like /etc/profile and $PATH
 
+if [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ] && case $- in (im|ilm) :;; (?*) ! :;; (*) :; esac
+then emulate zsh && setopt histexpiredupsfirst histreduceblanks rcquotes \
+histignorespace completealiases normstarsilent histsavenodups kshtypeset \
+histignoredups completeinword nopromptsubst sharehistory pathdirs notify \
+promptpercent noflowcontrol menucomplete extendedglob alwaystoend nobeep \
+histverify chaselinks autopushd braceccl autocd; fi # if .zshrc hasn't run
+
 # combine and load everything containing "YES_MYSHELL" in ~/sh/:
 [ -z "${0##/*}" ] && sh=zsh || sh="${0#-}" # zsh replaces $0, so hardcode it
 { [ -d "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:="$HOME/.cache"}" ] || mkdir "$XDG_CACHE_HOME"; } &&
diff --git a/sh/recombine b/sh/recombine
index 1c00b41..f9c3fd6 100644
--- a/sh/recombine
+++ b/sh/recombine
@@ -40,7 +40,6 @@ esac
 [ "$SH" != ZSH ] || set -o SH_WORD_SPLIT
 
 printf %s\\n '#!/usr/bin/env false' '[ -n "$preload" ] || exit 1' ''
-[ "$SH" != ZSH ] || printf %s\\n 'emulate zsh'
 for f in "${HOME:?}/sh"/*; do
     [ -n "${f##*.*}" ] && [ -f "$f" ] || continue
     i=10 ok=