Word.ws English Dictionary

patient 0

patient 0 is the alternative form of patient zero.

Meaning of patient zero

Noun

patient zero (plural patient zeros or patient zeroes or patients zero)

  1. The initial patient in the population of an epidemiological investigation.
    • When epidemiologists trace the evolution of a disease, they look for the first individual known to have contracted it, who is given the inglorious label "Patient Zero". For example, the official Patient Zero for the AIDS epidemic was a South African man who died in 1959 (though it is suspected that...2005, John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H. Naylor, Redefining Progress, Affluenza: the all-consuming epidemic, 2nd illustrated edition, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, →ISBN, page 128
    Synonyms:
    index patient
  2. (figuratively, informal) The source or origin of something.
    • Danny Boyle, patient zero of the zombie revival, reviews The Walking Dead.2013 April 20, “Populist: Items of interest this week”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2014

Forms of patient 0

pluralpatient 0s

Questions about patient 0

What is patient 0 the alternative form of?
Patient 0 is the alternative form of patient zero.

Words near patient 0 in the dictionary

  1. patience of Job
  2. patience of Mother Teresa
  3. patiences
  4. patiency
  5. patient
  6. patient 0
  7. patient 0s
  8. patient as Job
  9. patient contact
  10. patient contacts
  11. patient dumping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: patient 0 (page history and authors); patient zero (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “patient 0.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/patient_0. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.