(In a period of pay restraint) the principle that the percentage increase in wages should be zero in all but exceptional circumstances; = nil normn.
1966
There is no bogy-man so dismal to those who run Britain's economy as the dreaded Zero Norm, the spectre who is supposed to rule over pay negotiations in the six-month period of ‘severe restraint’ that replaces the total pay freeze from New Year's Day.
Economist 17 December 1214/1
1976
A zero norm which equalizes everybody is easier to endure.
F. Zweig, New Acquisitive Societyii. i. 80
2000
After devaluation, attempts to introduce a zero norm..all led to the strikes and wages explosion.
M. Rhodes in M. Ferrera & M. Rhodes, Recasting European Welfare States 167
zero norm typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zero norm is in frequency band 2, which contains words occurring between 0.001 and 0.01 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 norm, n., 1960–2010
* 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
1960
0.0036
1970
0.0033
1980
0.0031
1990
0.0031
2000
0.0031
2010
0.0029
Originally published as part of the entry for zero, n. & adj.