attributive designating a property, phenomenon, etc., relating to a condition in which a magnetic or other field is absent, or has an intensity of zero.
1915
When the two frequencies are different, this position is constantly changing and the pointer will rotate ‘fast’ or ‘slow’, coming to rest at the zero-field position when the frequencies are equal.
F. M. Farmer in F. F. Fowle, Standard Handbook Electr. Engineers (ed. 4) iii. 184
1967
The zero-field emission is obtained by prolonging the straight asymptote of the Schottky plots to the V = 0 line.
British Journal Applied Physicsvol. 18 629
2004
We employ the terminology of the negative magneto-resistance wherever the B field reduces the zero-field resistance.
K. Nakamura & T. Harayama, Quantum Chaos & Quantum Dots ix. 162
Frequency
zero-field typically occurs about 0.05 times per million words in modern written English.
zero-field is in frequency band 3, which contains words occurring between 0.01 and 0.1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zero-field, adj., 1910–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1910
0.0027
1920
0.0058
1930
0.018
1940
0.025
1950
0.033
1960
0.041
1970
0.047
1980
0.054
1990
0.06
2000
0.056
2010
0.052
Frequency of zero-field, adj., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus.
Period
Frequency per million words
2017
0.0026
2018
0.0039
2019
0.0075
2020
0.014
2021
0.019
2022
0.024
2023
0.028
2024
0.03
Originally published as part of the entry for zero, n. & adj.