as in center
a thing or place that is of greatest importance to an activity or interest
a city that was once ground zero for the insurance industry
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Recent Examples of ground zero
Among the crowd in Tampa was Silas Pearson, vice president of the largest Turning Point chapter in the country, at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, ground zero for evangelical higher education.
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Andrew Cockburn, Harpers Magazine, 30 Dec. 2025
Hands are ground zero for daily wear.
—Adam Hurly, Robb Report, 29 Dec. 2025
But for her show, the host and producer Zoe Kurland took apparent inspiration from the idiosyncratic residents of the Davis Mountains Resort—also known as ground zero for the Republic of Texas movement, which formed under the belief that the United States had illegally annexed Texas in 1845.
—Benjamin Cannon, The Atlantic, 23 Dec. 2025
Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—an agency once widely trusted for their commitment to the scientific process, has become ground zero for medical myths masquerading as fact.
—MSNBC Newsweek, 11 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for ground zero
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ground zero
Noun
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Godfall tells the story of a small Nebraska town, which becomes the center of the world when a giant alien crash lands out of the sky beside it.—
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Mitsubishi is looking to capitalize on rising power needs from data centers, manufacturing, as well as LNG exports, by expanding in the the world's largest gas market, citing domestic consumption, production, exports, and further demand growth.—
Noun
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Community development financial institutions are banks, credit unions, loan funds and capital funds that have a mission to provide help to underserved, often low-income or rural, communities.—
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School can be an awful place, where social capital is built on a person’s acceptance by a group, and any difference is sniffed out and mocked, sometimes worse.—
Noun
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Fort Worth as a whole has made a strong push to be recognized as a hub for film production.—
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Among other speakers at the Summit was Zach Kokoloff, senior vice president/asset management at Hackman Capital Partners which operates Radford Studio Center in Studio City, a 55-acre hub of stages, offices and support staff.—
Noun
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Frequenting some of the city’s smaller concert venues that help Chicago thrive as a live-music mecca.—
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Furano, Japan Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands, is a powder mecca.—
Noun
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Stepheny Price is a Writer at Fox News with a focus on West Coast and Midwest news, missing persons, national and international crime stories, homicide cases, and border security.—
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Barra says the focus now is on making cars more affordable, incorporating artificial intelligence and new technology like Google Gemini to make the vehicles safer and appealing to the consumer.—
Noun
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These dusters feature a slim flat base covered with a washable and reusable microfiber cloth that can slide under the bottom of appliances, picking up dust and other debris that has collected.—
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The children helped choose the location in the front yard and worked alongside their parents to stomp out the snow, creating a perfect 12-foot circle for the igloo’s base.—
Noun
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In essence, this would mean that alpha particles (helium nuclei) released by decaying uranium (or some other fissile material) would be focused through engine nozzles to generate thrust.—
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Comets tend to be at their brightest around perihelion, when the increase in solar heating causes icy material in their central coma to vaporize and feed the envelope of gas surrounding the solid nucleus.—
Noun
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At the core of Parkie’s operation is a wireless backbone that allows robots to coordinate movements, receive commands, and relay status data in real time while constantly on the move.—
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It is not included in Moody's core count but accounted for the top sale of November.—
Cite this Entry
“Ground zero.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ground%20zero. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
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