Other forms: zeros, zeroes
Zero is the number that means none at all — 0. Zero degrees, reduced to zero, from zero.
English has an unusual number of words for it and they are not interchangeable. Zero is the mathematical and technical word. Nought is British for the digit, and nil is used in scores: two nil. O, said like the letter, is used in phone numbers and years. Love is zero in tennis. Getting these wrong is immediately noticeable. Note zero in the compounds zero hour, zero tolerance and net zero, all of which are fixed phrases with specific meanings.
1nounzeroThe number 0.
“The count went from zero to four hundred in a week.”
synonyms: nought, nil
2adjectiveadjectiveNone at all.
“There was zero interest from anybody.”
3nounpointThe point on a scale from which measurement starts.
“It fell below zero every night that week.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
zero is a number.
Also accepted in games: nought
Arabic sifr meant empty or nothing, translating Sanskrit shunya, void. It reached Europe through Italian zefiro, shortened to zero. The same Arabic word also gives cipher, so zero and cipher are the same word arriving twice, one for the digit and one for the code.
Sanskrit
शून्य — void; nothingness
Arabic
صِفْر — nothing; cipher
Medieval Latin
zēphirum
roa-oit
zero
Middle French
zero
es-ear
zero
English, today
zero
0 Collectively borrowed from es-ear zero, Middle French zero, and (their etymon) roa-oit zero, from Medieval Latin zēphirum, from Arabic صِفْر (“nothing; cipher”), itself calqued from Sanskrit शून्य (“void; nothingness”). a doublet of cipher and chiffre. Cognate with Spanish cero and French zéro.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA