Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The target of a projectile, such as a missile or bomb.
- n. The site directly below, directly above, or at the point of detonation of a nuclear weapon.
- n. The center of rapid or intense development or change: "The neighborhood scarcely existed five years ago, but today it is the ground zero from which designer shops and restaurants radiate” ( Robert Clark).
- n. The starting point or most basic level: My client didn't like my preliminary designs, so I returned to ground zero.
Wiktionary
- n. The point on the land or water surface below, above, or at which an atomic or nuclear bomb detonates
- n. by extension The location of any disaster
WordNet 3.0
- n. the target of a projectile (as a bomb or missile)
- n. the site of the World Trade Center before it was destroyed
- n. the point of detonation (or above or below) of a nuclear weapon
Examples
“So the Grumleys had set up almost at ground zero of the NASCAR explosion: directly across from NASCAR Village, on the other side of parkway, just a bit down from the driveway that led to the parkway from the speedway headquarters, an admin building in art moderne aluminum.”
“In the past half-century, the meaning was extended to “the center of violent activity or sudden change,” and even to “the ultimate origin, very be-ginning,” as a near-synonym to the informal board-game phrase square one; as such, ground zero is lowercase.”
Simon & Schuster: The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time
“Ed Mathias was a managing partner at the Carlyle Group—a powerful private-equity investment firm in D.C. that counts among its partners and clients ex-presidents, prime ministers, and Arabian princes, and is also ground zero for liberal conspiracy theorists.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ground zero’.
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That Could Have Gone Better
dud, flop, fiasco, debacle, failure, learning experience, wash, doa, epic fail, bomb, crash and burn, bungle and 41 more...
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metaphysical metaphorical places
not corresponding to a specific physical location
at the end of one..., at one's wits end, up the creek, round the bend, on cloud nine, in the doldrums, in cloud-cuckoo land, sold down the river, on a slow boat to..., in a brown study, down the rabbit hole, in a rut and 84 more...
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Well, Everyone Else Has A Hate-List, ...
When I rule the planet, the undermentioned items shall all be corrrected or expunged. In some cases I don't like the item from a linguistic point of view, in others I don't like what the item repre...
big-box store, ms, wonderation, disinterest, milquetoast, emoticon, herstory, australia, zero-sum game, specialism, assessable, pebblecrete and 52 more...
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