Heh. Sorry for not reading your first posting thoroughly enough.
From the zshcontrib(1) manual:
  up-line-or-beginning-search, down-line-or-beginning-search      These widgets are similar to the builtin functions      up-line-or-search and down-line-or-search: if in a      multiline buffer they move up or down within the      buffer, otherwise they search for a history line      matching the start of the current line. In this case,      however, they search for a line which matches the      current line up to the current cursor position, in the      manner  of history-beginning-search-backward  and      -forward, rather than the first word on the line.
So, you'd probably need something along the lines of this:
 autoload -Uz up-line-or-beginning-search  autoload -Uz down-line-or-beginning-search  bindkey '\eOA' up-line-or-beginning-search  bindkey '\e[A' up-line-or-beginning-search  bindkey '\eOB' down-line-or-beginning-search  bindkey '\e[B' down-line-or-beginning-search
OK! Â I placed those 6 lines in my ~/.zshrc.local and resourced the config file. Â The key mapping seems intact:
% bindkey '"^[[A" up-line-or-beginning-search
But if I attempt to use the uparrow now, I get:
% vim ~/ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â :(Â No such widget `up-line-or-beginning-search'
You thoughts are welcomed and thank you.