Word Type
Zero can be a numeral, an adjective, a noun or a verb.
zero used as a numeral:
- The cardinal number occurring before one and that denotes no quantity or amount at all, represented in Arabic numerals as 0.
"The conductor waited until the passenger count was zero."
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zero used as an adjective:
- Virtually none.
"She showed zero respect." - Of a cloud ceiling, limiting vision to 50 feet (15 meters) or less.
- Of horizontal visibility, limited to 165 feet (50.3 meters) or less.
- Present at an abstract level, but not realized in the data.
"The stem of "kobieta" with the zero ending is "kobiet"."
Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →
zero used as a noun:
- The numeric symbol that represents the cardinal number zero.
"In unary and k-adic notation in general, zero is the empty string." - The digit 0 in the decimal, binary, and all other base numbering systems.
"One million has six zeros." - Nothing, or none.
"The shipment was lost, so they had zero in stock." - The value of a magnitude corresponding to the cardinal number zero.
"The electromagnetic field does not drop all the way to zero before a reversal." - The point on a scale at which numbering or measurement originates.
"The temperature outside is ten degrees below zero." - A value of the independent variables of a function, for which the function is equal to zero.
"The zeros of a polynomial are its roots by the fundamental theorem of algebra." - The additive identity element of a monoid or greater algebraic structure, particularly a group or ring.
"Since a commutative zero is the inverse of any additive identity, it must be unique when it exists." - A person of little or no importance.
"They rudely treated him like a zero." - A plane flown by a Japanese kamikaze in WWII.
- A setting of calibrated instruments such as a firearm.
- A security which has a zero coupon (paying no periodic interest).
"The takeovers were financed by issuing zeros."
Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →
zero used as a verb:
- To set a measuring instrument to zero; to calibrate instrument scale to valid zero.
"Zero the fluorometer with the same solvent used in extraction." - To change a memory location or range to values of zero; to set a variable in a computer program to zero.
"Results were inconsistent because an array wasn’t zeroed during initialization." - To cause or set some value or amount to be zero.
"They tried to zero the budget by the end of the quarter." - To eliminate; to delete; to overwrite with zeros.
- To disappear
Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →
Related Searches
What type of word is zero?
- Numeral usage: The conductor waited until the passenger count was zero.
- Numeral usage: A cheque for zero dollars and zero cents crashed the computers on division by zero.
- Adjective usage: She showed zero respect.
- Adjective usage: The stem of "kobieta" with the zero ending is "kobiet".
- Noun usage: In unary and k-adic notation in general, zero is the empty string.
- Noun usage: Write 0.0 to indicate a floating point rather than the integer zero.
- Noun usage: The zero sign in American Sign Language is considered rude in some cultures.
- Noun usage: One million has six zeros.
- Noun usage: The shipment was lost, so they had zero in stock.
- Noun usage: He knows zero about humor.
- Noun usage: In the end, all our hard work amounted to zero.
- Noun usage: The electromagnetic field does not drop all the way to zero before a reversal.
- Noun usage: The temperature outside is ten degrees below zero.
- Noun usage: The zeros of a polynomial are its roots by the fundamental theorem of algebra.
- Noun usage: The derivative of a continuous, differentiable function that twice crosses the axis must have a zero.
- Noun usage: The nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function may all lie on the critical line.
- Noun usage: Since a commutative zero is the inverse of any additive identity, it must be unique when it exists.
- Noun usage: The quotient ring over a maximal ideal is a field with a single zero element.
- Noun usage: They rudely treated him like a zero.
- Noun usage: The takeovers were financed by issuing zeros.
- Verb usage: Zero the fluorometer with the same solvent used in extraction.
- Verb usage: Results were inconsistent because an array wasn’t zeroed during initialization.
- Verb usage: They tried to zero the budget by the end of the quarter.
Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of zero are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of zero, and guess at its most common usage.
Word Type
For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.
The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.
Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.
Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.
Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).
