zone centre | zone center, n.

zone-centre
http://www.oed.com/dictionary/zone-centre_n-a%3Ftab%3Dmeaning_and_use
First published 1986; not fully revised

# zone centre | zone centernoun

## Factsheet

### What does the noun zone centre mean?

There is one meaning in OED's entry for the noun zone centre. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definition, usage, and quotation evidence.

#### Entry status

OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.

### How common is the noun zone centre?

About 0.03occurrences per million words in modern written English

1930 | 0.0088
1940 | 0.012
1950 | 0.016
1960 | 0.019
1970 | 0.022
1980 | 0.025
1990 | 0.028
2000 | 0.029
2010 | 0.029

### Where does the noun zone centre come from?

Earliest known use

1930s

The earliest known use of the noun zone centre is in the 1930s.

OED's earliest evidence for zone centre is from 1934, in the writing of G. S. Berkeley.

### Nearby entries

1. zona pellucida, n. 1841–
2. zona radiata, n. 1881–
3. zona reticularis, n. 1874–
4. zonarious, adj. 1656–
5. zonary, adj. 1881–
6. zonate, adj. 1866–
7. zonated, adj. 1803–
8. zonation, n. 1898–
9. zone, n. a1500–
10. zone, v. 1792–
11. zone centre | zone center, n.1934–
12. zoned, adj. 1662–
13. zone defence | zone defense, n. 1927–
14. zone electrophoresis, n. 1952–
15. zone fossil, n. 1904–
16. zoneless, adj. 1748–
17. zonelet, n. 1855–
18. zone level, v. 1974–
19. zone leveller, n. 1956–
20. zone levelling, n. 1953–
21. zone-melt, v. 1982–

## Meaning & use

spec. in Telephony.

1. 1934–
   An exchange which acts as a main switching centre in an area containing a number of exchange groups.
   1. 1934

      > Level 94..is used for trunk calls instead of level o in the case of exchanges in Trunk Zone Centres.

      G. S. Berkeley, Traffic & Trunking Principles in Automatic Telephony i. 12
   2. 1948

      > The group centre extends the call to the zone centre where it is routed to the distant zone centre exchange.

      J. Atkinson, Herbert & Procter's Telephony vol. I. xii. 234/2
   3. 1960

      > A suitable exchange (zone centre) is established within each zone to handle the long-distance calls to and from that zone.

      R. Syski, Introduction to Congestion Theory in Telephone Systems ii. 53
   4. 1971

      > Zone centre, exchange acting as the main switching centre.

      Glossary Electrotechnical, Power Terms (British Standards Institution) iii. ii. 8
   telephony
   1. telephone exchange 1878–
      A central office or other location where connections between telephone lines are made (originally by a switchboard operator, now usually…
   2. local exchange 1879–
      The nearest telephone exchange to which a particular telephone is connected.
   3. call office 1882–
      An establishment where members of the public can make and receive telephone calls.
   4. central 1883–
      U.S. A (central) telephone exchange. Also: an operator at such an exchange. Often without determiner. Now historical.
   5. exchange 1887–
      (a) Preceded by some defining word that indicates a special branch of business: as coal-exchange, corn-exchange, hop-exchange, stock-exchange, woo…
   6. private branch exchange 1904–
      An exchange on private premises by which private lines may be connected to a public network; abbreviated PBX.
   7. PBX 1914–
      Private branch exchange.
   8. zone centre 1934–
      An exchange which acts as a main switching centre in an area containing a number of exchange groups.
   View in Historical Thesaurus

## Frequency

zone centre typically occurs about 0.03 times per million words in modern written English.

zone centre 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 zone centre | zone center, n., 1930–2010

* 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
--- | ---
1930 | 0.0088
1940 | 0.012
1950 | 0.016
1960 | 0.019
1970 | 0.022
1980 | 0.025
1990 | 0.028
2000 | 0.029
2010 | 0.029

Originally published as part of the entry for zone, n.

zone, n. was first published in 1921; not fully revised.