Word.ws English Dictionary

year zero

year zero noun: a non-existing (but often assumed) year in between 1 BCE/BC and 1 CE/AD.

Noun

year zero (uncountable)

  1. (literally) a non-existing (but often assumed) year in between 1 BCE/BC and 1 CE/AD
    • The new millennium only began in 2001 because there is no year zero!
  2. (broadly) the beginning of the Common Era/Christian Era
    • What was life in Rome like around the year zero?

Questions about year zero

What does year zero mean?
Year zero means a non-existing (but often assumed) year in between 1 BCE/BC and 1 CE/AD.
What part of speech is year zero?
Year zero is a noun.

Words near year zero in the dictionary

  1. year of our Lord
  2. year of the Lord
  3. year out
  4. year to date
  5. Year Without a Summer
  6. year zero
  7. year's mind
  8. year's purchase
  9. year-around
  10. year-bird
  11. year-birds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: year 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: “year zero.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/year_zero. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.