Hero vs. Zero — What's the Difference?

A hero (heroine in its feminine form) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly solely gender-specific terms (like actor), hero is often used to refer to any gender, though heroine only refers to women.

The numerical symbol 0; a cipher.

A priestess of Aphrodite beloved by Leander.

The identity element for addition.

A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed one's life

A cardinal number indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration.

A person noted for special achievement in a particular field

An ordinal number indicating an initial point or origin.

The principal character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation.

An argument at which the value of a function vanishes.

In mythology and legend, an individual, often a man of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for bold exploits, and favored by the gods.

The temperature indicated by the numeral 0 on a thermometer.

See submarine sandwich.

A sight setting that enables a firearm to shoot on target.

Somebody who possesses great bravery and carries out extraordinary or noble deeds.

(Informal) One having no influence or importance; a nonentity

A role model.

The lowest point

The protagonist in a work of fiction.

(Informal) Nothing; nil

(poker) The current player, especially an hypothetical player for example and didactic purposes. Compare: any opponent player. Not to be confused with a weak call against a supposed bluff.

Of, relating to, or being zero.

(US) A large sandwich made from meats and cheeses; a hero sandwich.

Having no measurable or otherwise determinable value.

The product chosen from several candidates to be photographed, as in food advertising, or with props used in a movie.

(Informal) Not any; no

(web design) The eye-catching top portion of a web page, sometimes including a hero image; the portion above the fold.

Designating a ceiling not more than 16 meters (52 feet) high.

An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.

Limited in horizontal visibility to no more than 55 meters (180 feet).

A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.

(Linguistics) Of or relating to a morpheme that is expected by an established, regular paradigm but has no spoken or written form. Moose has a zero plural; that is, its plural is moose.

The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Æneas in the Æneid.

To adjust (an instrument or a device) to zero value.

A man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength;

The cardinal number occurring before one and that denotes no quantity or amount at all, represented in Arabic numerals as 0.

The principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem

The numeric symbol that represents the cardinal number zero.

Someone who fights for a cause

The digit 0 in the decimal, binary, and all other base numbering systems.

Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)

Nothing, or none.

(classical mythology) a being of great strength and courage celebrated for bold exploits; often the offspring of a mortal and a god

The value of a magnitude corresponding to the cardinal number zero.

(Greek mythology) priestess of Aphrodite who killed herself when her lover Leander drowned while trying to swim the Hellespont to see her

The point on a scale at which numbering or measurement originates.

A large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments); different names are used in different sections of the United States

(mathematics) A value of the independent variables of a function, for which the function is equal to zero.

The additive identity element of a monoid or greater algebraic structure, particularly a group or ring.

(slang) A person of little or no importance.

(military) A Mitsubishi A6M Zero, a long range fighter aircraft operated by the Japanese Navy Air Service from 1940 to 1945.

A setting of calibrated instruments such as a firearm, corresponding to a zero value.

(finance) A security which has a zero coupon (paying no periodic interest).

(informal) No, not any.

(meteorology) Of a cloud ceiling, limiting vision to 50 feet (15 meters) or less.

(meteorology) Of horizontal visibility, limited to 165 feet (50.3 meters) or less.

(linguistics) Present at an abstract level, but not realized in the surface form.

(transitive) To set a measuring instrument to zero; to calibrate an instrument scale to valid zero.

To change a memory location or range to values of zero; to set a variable in a computer program to zero.

(transitive) To cause or set some value or amount to be zero.

(transitive) To eliminate; to delete; to overwrite with zeros.

(intransitive) To disappear.

A cipher; nothing; naught.

The point from which the graduation of a scale, as of a thermometer, commences.

Fig.: The lowest point; the point of exhaustion; as, his patience had nearly reached zero.

A quantity of no importance;

A mathematical element that when added to another number yields the same number

The quantity that registers a reading of zero on a scale

Adjust (an instrument or device) to zero value

Adjust (as by firing under test conditions) the zero of (a gun);

Indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration;

Indicating an initial point or origin

Of or relating to the null set (a set with no members)

Having no measurable or otherwise determinable value;