retire vs zero

retire

verb
  • To withdraw; to take away. 

  • To stop working on a permanent basis, usually because of old age or illness. 

  • To cease use or production of something. 

  • To go back or return; to withdraw or retreat, especially from public view; to go into privacy. 

  • To fit (a vehicle) with new tires. 

  • To recede; to fall or bend back. 

  • To go to bed. 

  • To voluntarily stop batting before being dismissed so that the next batsman can bat. 

  • To retreat from action or danger; to withdraw for safety or pleasure. 

  • To withdraw from circulation, or from the market; to take up and pay. 

  • To cause to retire; specifically, to designate as no longer qualified for active service; to place on the retired list. 

  • To make a play which results in a runner or the batter being out, either by means of a put out, fly out or strikeout. 

noun
  • The act of retiring, or the state of being retired. 

  • A place to which one retires. 

zero

verb
  • To disappear. 

  • 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. 

  • To cause or set some value or amount to be zero. 

  • To eliminate; to delete; to overwrite with zeros. 

adj
  • No, not any. 

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

  • Present at an abstract level, but not realized in the surface form. 

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

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

  • The numeric symbol that represents the cardinal number zero. 

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

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

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

  • The electromagnetic field does not drop all of the way to zero before a reversal. 

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

  • Nothing, or none. 

  • A person of little or no importance. 

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

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

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

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

How often have the words retire and zero occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )