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ZERO

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 975 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ZERO , the figure 0 in the Arabic notation for See also:

numbers, nought, See also:cipher. The Arabic name for the figure was sifr, which meant literally an empty thing. The old Latin writers on See also:arithmetic translated or transliterated the Arabic word as zephyrum; this in Ital. became zefiro, contracted to zero, borrowed by F. zero, whence it came See also:late into See also:English. The See also:Spanish See also:form cifra, more closely resembling the See also:original Arabic, gave O. Fr. cifre, mod. chiffre, also used in the sense of mono-See also:gram, and English " cipher " which is thus a doublet. In physics, the See also:term is applied to a point with which phenomena are quantitatively compared, especially to a point of a graduated See also:instrument between a See also:positive and negative or ascending and descending See also:scale, as in the scales of temperature.

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