Pl. zeroes. [ad. F. zéro (1515 in Hatz.-Darm.) or its source It. zero, for *zefiro, ad. Arab. çifr CIPHER.]
1. The arithmetical figure 0 which denotes ‘nought’: = CIPHER sb. 1. Now rare.
1604. E. G[rimstone], D’Acosta’s Hist. Indies, VI. ii. 435. They accompted their weekes by thirteene dayes, marking the dayes with a Zero or cipher.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey). Zero, a Word sometimes us’d especially among the French, for a Cipher or Nought (0).
1799. Tilloch’s Philos. Mag.,. II. 413. Every letter … marked with a figure followed by a zero.
1854. Orr’s Circ. Sci., Math. Sci., 16. Sometimes the divisor ends with zeros or noughts.
1857. Househ. Words, 8 Aug., 143/2. A five, with a zero to the right, and a three to the left.
1878. Gurney, Crystallogr., 15. If we have two zeros in the symbol.
b. The compartment numbered 0 on a roulette table.
1859. Lever, Dav. Dunn, xlvi. I have been sketching out a little plan of a martingale for the roulette-table. There’s only one zero at Homburg, and we can try it there as we go up.
1889. J.-S. Bond, Roulette, 29. If for 150 years Roulette has held its own against all comers, it is zero that has done it.
1911. trans. Silberer’s Roulette, 50. When the zéro comes out, the Bank takes the half of all stakes on the chances simples and the whole of all stakes upon the chances multiples (excepting, of course, stakes laid upon zéro, or on a combination including zéro, which alone it pays).
2. The point or line marked 0 on a graduated scale, from which the reckoning begins: esp. in a thermometer or other measuring instrument.
1795. Phil. Trans., LXXXV. 446. When the instrument is adjusted, and the index belonging to the micrometer-screw stands at the zero on its circle.
1826. Art of Brewing (Libr. Usef. Knowl., 1829), 19/2. If the saccharometer be made so as to sink to a certain point marked zero (a cypher) in distilled water.
1826. Henry, Elem. Chem., II. 639. The Centigrade thermometer places the zero at the freezing point.
1840. Lardner, Geom., 208. The French adopt as their zero of longitude the meridian which passes through the Observatory at Paris.
1890. W. F. Stanley, Surv. & Lev. Instr., 439. These rollers are fixed in such a manner as to turn in a circumference concentric with the zero of the alidade.
3. The temperature corresponding to the zero of a thermometer; that degree of heat (or cold) which is reckoned as 0°: i.e., in the Centigrade and Réaumur’s scales, the freezing-point of water; in Fahrenheit’s scale (the usual one in Eng. use), 32° below this, or ‘thirty-two degrees of frost.’
Absolute zero, the lowest temperature possible in the nature of things, at which the molecular motion which constitutes heat would cease; the zero of absolute temperature, reckoned as –273°C.
1800. trans. Lagrange’s Chem., I. 78. That the melting of ice produces cold, is proved by the custom which confectioners have of melting certain salts with ice to produce a cold below zero.
1809. Med. Jrnl., XXI. 525. On the 23d of January, at sunrise, the thermometer was 10 deg., on the 26th 13 deg. below Zero; the coldest weather ever recorded in this town.
1823. Byron, Juan, X. xxxiii. Thermometers sunk down to … zero.
1848. Watts, trans. Gmelin’s Hand-bk. Chem., I. 303. Clement and Desormes place the absolute zero at –266·6° C. (–447·9° Fah.).
1905. Times, 24 Jan., 4/6. In a terrible surf, with the glass near zero, they finally brought the remnant of the crew off safely.
4. In abstract sense: Nought or nothing reckoned as a number denoted by the figure 0, and constituting the starting point of the series of natural numbers; the total absence of quantity considered as a quantity (in Alg. and Higher Math. as intermediate between positive and negative quantities); hence as expressing the amount of something = ‘none at all.’
1823. Byron, Juan, IX. ii. Though your years as man tend fast to zero.
1831. Phil. Trans., CXXI. 113. This sum is equal to zero in all positions of the line d s round the point (x, y, z).
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. ix. Unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity.
1872. Lowell, Dante, Pr. Wks. 1890, IV. 155. Dante’s direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned at zero.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VII. 248. In a certain patient, I have observed the intercranial tension to be slightly below zero while he was standing upright.
b. In the theory of functions, A value of a variable for which a function vanishes.
1893. A. R. Forsyth, Functions, 62. The number of distinct zeros in the limited area is finite.
1902. E. T. Whittaker, Mod. Anal., 94. A polynomial of degree n has n zeros.
5. fig. (from 4). Something that counts as or amounts to nothing; a worthless thing or person, one of no account; a ‘cipher,’ ‘nonentity’; a ‘nothing’ or ‘nobody.’
1813. Maria Edgeworth, Patronage, xxiv. The other gentlemen are zeros.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., VI. ix. II. 126. Whatever the answer now be from England, I will have nothing to do with it … to me it shall be zero.
1861. J. M. Ludlow, in Macm. Mag., III. 322. A man who will not work, whilst he will not, is as complete a zero in the labour supply as if he were dead, or had never come into the world.
1870. H. Macmillan, True Vine, iii. (1872), 82. He is not surrounded with a vast zero, an all-absorbing negation.
6. fig. (from 2 and 3). a. The lowest point or degree; vanishing-point; nothingness, nullity. (Sometimes coinciding with b.)
1823. Byron, Juan, III. cx. Sure my invention must be down at zero.
1837. Hood, Desert-Born, 64. Merely to look at such a sight my courage sinks to zero.
1867. ‘Mark Twain,’ Jumping Frog, Curing a Cold. I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero.
1894. Drummond, Ascent of Man, 176. Man began the Ascent of Civilization at zero.
b. The initial point of a process or reckoning; the starting-point, the absolute beginning.
Hour of zero, in recent military use = zero hour (see 7 a).
1849. H. Miller, Footpr. Creator, x. 193. The vegetation of the Silurian system, from its upper beds down till where we reach the zero of life.
1866. J. Martineau, Ess., I. 7. He … makes 1788 his zero of human history.
1916. P. Gibbs, Battles of Somme, xxvii. 248. When the hour of ‘zero’ came for the attack.
7. attrib. a. in sense 2 (or 6 b), as zero-line, -mark, -plane, -point; zero creep, spontaneous slow displacement of the zero-point on a graduated scale; zero hour (Mil.), the hour at which an attack or operation is timed to begin; zero magnet, a magnet for adjusting the zero, e.g., of a galvanometer; zero mark, post, a mark or post from which distances along roads are measured.
1906. Athenæum, 19 May, 612/2. A very ingenious bifilar galvanometer … warranted free from the tendency to *zero creep.
1917. W. Beach Thomas, With British on Somme, II. v. The coming of the *zero hour of 3.30 in the morning.
1915. A. Keith, Antiq. Man, xxi. 341. The horizontal or *zero line, which crosses the hinder and lower angles of the right and left parietal bones.
1862. Tyndall, Heat i. (1863), 3. At the present moment the needle … points to the *zero mark on the graduated disc.
1908. W. A. Russell, in Times, 2 Jan., 8/6. It [the iron tablet marking the position of Tyburn-gate] is virtually a milestone, marking, as it does, a spot from which the miles on the two great roads that join at the Marble Arch are measured. It is perhaps the sole survivor of the zero marks of London.
1880. Haughton, Phys. Geog., ii. 51. The *zero plane is the surface of the ellipsoid similar to the sea surface.
1810. T. Thomson, Syst. Chem. (ed. 4), I. 565. A thermometer, the *zero point of which indicates absolute cold.
1908. Daily Chron., 9 Jan., 3/3. The *zero posts which formerly stood on the present site of the Marble Arch, and at Hyde-park-corner.
b. in sense 3, as zero night, temperature, weather.
1854. Hawthorne, Engl. Note-bks. (1870), I. 162. In the zero atmosphere of America.
1855. Browning, Old Pict. in Flor., xxxiv. Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate.
1884. E. P. Roe, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 288/2. I can keep my laying hens warm even in zero weather.
1899. Edin. Rev., April, 323. Molecular rest—the theoretical condition of zero-temperature—is an intelligible state, although perhaps an illusory goal.
1902. Encycl. Brit., XXXIII. 299/2. The zero reading and the steam reading would both generally correspond to a falling meniscus.
c. in sense 4: That is of the amount expressed by zero, i.e., none at all; in Math. also transf. applied to a value of a function corresponding to the value 0 of the variable or variables.
1879. Cayley, Math. Papers, X. 499. The letter c is used in connexion with the zero values u = 0, v = 0 of the arguments, viz.:—
When (u, v) are indefinitely small each of these functions is of course equal to its zero-value plus a quadric term in (u, v).
1882. Minchin, Unipl. Kinemat., 25. The surface of still water is agitated by wave disturbances proceeding from three fixed points…: find the points of zero disturbance.
1920. Conquest, April, 257/2. Years of tedious work out of which there was always the chance of a zero result.
