drab vs zero

drab

noun
  • A dull or uninteresting appearance or situation, unremarkable. 

  • An instance of a transgender or non-binary person presenting as the gender corresponding to their sex assigned at birth instead of that corresponding to their internal gender identity (for instance, a trans woman dressed as a man). 

  • A fabric, usually of thick cotton or wool, having a dull brownish yellow, dull grey, or dun colour. 

  • Often in the plural form drabs: apparel, especially trousers, made from this fabric. 

  • The colour of this fabric. 

  • A small amount, especially of money. 

  • A box used in a saltworks for holding the salt when taken out of the boiling pans. 

adj
  • Of the colour of some types of drabcloth: dull brownish yellow or dun. 

  • Particularly of colour: dull, uninteresting. 

zero

noun
  • A person of little or no importance. 

  • 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 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. 

verb
  • To set a measuring instrument to zero; to calibrate an instrument scale to valid zero. 

  • To disappear. 

  • 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. 

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

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. 

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