thanks. The original context where I heard this term had nothing to do with inverter-fed drives.
Someone stated that if care is not taken during coil removal for rewound of random-wound machines, the stator slot teeth can be deformed or damaged resulting in and increase in zig-zag flux patterns and associated increase in stray loss.
Based on your the info you provided, I believe that zig-zag flux must be the fringing flux (non-radial flux) which created when a rotor bar sits on top of a stator tooth... flux must go tangentially to get to the rotor iron.
I can see how this would perhaps represent a harmonic leakage reactance. I'm not sure how it would contribute a stray losses.