zero
Part of speech: num
noun
det
adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: algebra
business
climatology
finance
government
human-sciences
linguistics
mathematics
meteorology
military
natural-sciences
politics
sciences
war
Etymology: Collectively borrowed from Early Modern Spanish zero, Middle French zero, and (their etymon) Old Italian zero, from Medieval Latin zēphirum, from Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr, “nothing; cipher”), itself calqued from Sanskrit शून्य (śūnyá, “void; nothingness”). Doublet of cipher and chiffre. Cognate with Spanish cero and French zéro.
Inflected forms:
form: zeros
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: zeroes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: zeroes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: zeros
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: zeroing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: zeroed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: zeroed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: The cardinal number occurring before one and that denotes no quantity or amount at all, represented in Arabic numerals as 0.
pos: num
examples: The conductor waited until the passenger count was zero.
A cheque for zero dollars and zero cents crashed the computers on division by zero.
Last year, it scored 26 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks countries on a scale of zero to 100, with zero meaning “highly corrupt” and 100 signifying that a country is “very clean.”
"A zero itself is nothing, but without a zero you cannot count anything. Therefore, a zero is something, yet zero."
 These words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama might not have been in the minds of planners and engineers when designing new railway station platforms, but for several main line stations, zero is indeed something. Eight stations in the UK now operate a Platform 0 - from Cardiff to Kings Cross, Doncaster and Haymarket.
gloss: The numeric symbol that represents the cardinal number zero.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: In unary and k-adic notation in general, zero is the empty string.
Write 0.0 to indicate a floating point number rather than the integer zero.
The zero sign in American Sign Language is considered rude in some cultures.
gloss: The digit 0 in the decimal, binary, and all other base numbering systems.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: One million has six zeroes.
His idea is to stand billions of ultrafine wire loops around the edge of a silicon chip — hence the name racetrack — and use electric current to slide infinitesimally small magnets up and down along each of the wires to be read and written as digital ones and zeros.
Here is the formal definition: an autobiographical number is a number N such that the first digit of N counts how many zeroes are in N, the second digit counts how many ones are in N and so on. In our example, 1210 has 1 zero, 2 ones, 1 two and 0 threes.
This effectively allows switching on and off of the flow of current, so it is either conducting or not conducting, creating the binary system of zeroes and ones used in digital computers.
gloss: Nothing, or none.
pos: noun
tags: informal
uncountable
examples: The shipment was lost, so they had zero in stock.
He knows zero about humour.
In the end, all of our hard work amounted to zero.
gloss: The value of a magnitude corresponding to the cardinal number zero.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The electromagnetic field does not drop all of the way to zero before a reversal.
Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.
gloss: The point on a scale at which numbering or measurement originates.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The temperature outside is ten degrees below zero.
gloss: A value of the independent variables of a function, for which the function is equal to zero.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The zeroes of a polynomial are its roots by the fundamental theorem of algebra.
The derivative of a continuous, differentiable function that twice crosses the axis must have a zero.
The nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function may all lie on the critical line.
As the next example shows, the set of zeros may well have a limit point not belonging to the domain.
gloss: The additive identity element of a monoid or greater algebraic structure, particularly a group or ring.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Since a commutative zero is the inverse of any additive identity, it must be unique when it exists.
The zero (of a ring or field) has the property that the product of the zero with any element yields the zero.
The quotient ring over a maximal ideal is a field with a single zero element.
gloss: A person dismissed as unimportant.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
examples: They rudely treated him like a zero.
gloss: A Mitsubishi A6M Zero, a long range fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service from 1940 to 1945.
pos: noun
tags: capitalized
countable
uncountable
usually
examples: The visit to Townsville was filled with nostalgia for me. I remembered very well staying there on June 8, 1942. I shared a room with a brave and friendly officer, Colonel Francis Stevens. Early the next morning we flew to Port Moresby in New Guinea, and from there we took off in separate planes. Colonel Stevens never returned from that flight; his plane was shot down by a Japanese Zero.
gloss: A setting of calibrated instruments such as a firearm, corresponding to a zero value.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A security which has a zero coupon (paying no periodic interest).
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The takeovers were financed by issuing zeroes.
gloss: Synonym of no.
pos: det
examples: She showed zero respect.
You have to salute Gerrard's bravery in accepting the challenge of trying to turn Rangers around given that he has zero experience in senior management. Immortality beckons if he does it.
gloss: Of a cloud ceiling, limiting vision to 50 feet (15 meters) or less.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Of horizontal visibility, limited to 165 feet (50.3 meters) or less.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Present at an abstract level, but not realized in the surface form.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: The stem of "kobieta" with the zero ending is "kobiet".
gloss: Used in the names of foodstuffs, especially beverages, to indicate a version with no calories
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
postpositional
gloss: To set some amount to be zero.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: They tried to zero the budget by the end of the quarter.
Results were inconsistent because an array wasn’t zeroed during initialization.
Zero the fluorometer with the same solvent used in extraction.
George parked in space 34, zeroed the trip meter, closed and locked his car, then went back to the guard shack.
gloss: To disappear or make something disappear.
pos: verb
examples: Traffic on the encrypted channels used by senior Iraqi generals had peaked and zeroed, then peaked again, and zeroed again.
They discovered the object code for the simulator that was DON, and zeroed it. DON — or his creator — was clever and had planted many copies,
If I zeroed Jack, I'd get by So I'd erased him, pretended the last few months had never happened.
gloss: To adjust until the variance is reduced to an acceptably low amount.
pos: verb
examples: The soldier took his gun to the shooting range to zero its aim.
Synonyms: value of a function’s variables at zero
origin
zero point
nadir
Antonyms: pole
Derived words: non-zero
aleph-zero
decimal without a zero
go from zero to hero
net-zero
net zero
sub-zero
zero air
zero-based budget
zero coupon bond
zero crossing
zero-day
zero deflection
zero-dimensional
zero-emission vehicle
zero-grade
zero gravity
zero hour
zero hundred
zero ideal
zeroize
zeroise
zero-knowledge
zero-knowledge proof
zero-length launching
zero locus
zero method
zero one infinity rule
zero-pass
zero-point energy
zero-rated
zero-sum
zero-sum game
zero vector
zero growth
zero tolerance
zero in
zero in on
zero out
Translations:
lang: Breton
word: mann
lang: Breton
word: zero
lang: Catalan
word: zero
lang: Czech
word: nula
lang: Danish
word: nulpunkt
lang: Dutch
word: nul
lang: Esperanto
word: nulo
lang: Finnish
word: nolla
lang: Finnish
word: nollapiste
lang: French
word: zéro
lang: German
word: Null
lang: Hebrew
word: אפס
roman: éffes
lang: Hindi
word: शून्य
roman: śūnya
lang: Interlingua
word: zero
lang: Italian
word: zero
lang: Northern Kurdish
word: sifir
lang: Latvian
word: nulle
lang: Latvian
word: nullpunkts
lang: Maltese
word: żero
lang: Norwegian
word: nullpunkt
lang: Polish
word: zero
lang: Portuguese
word: zero
lang: Romanian
word: zero
lang: Scottish Gaelic
word: neoni
lang: Serbo-Croatian
word: нула
lang: Serbo-Croatian
word: nula
lang: Sindhi
word: ٻُڙِي
roman: buri
lang: Slovene
word: ničla
lang: Spanish
word: cero
lang: Swedish
word: nolla
lang: Tatar
word: ноль
roman: nolʹ
lang: Tatar
word: nol
lang: Vietnamese
word: số không
lang: Vietnamese
word: zêrô