English
Etymology
The phrase possibly comes from adjusting a sighting mechanism of a firearm to minimise the discrepency between where the sight points and where a bullet lands on a target.
Verb
to zero in
- To focus one's aim; to zoom in and center on something.
#: The pilot zeroed in and launched the guided missile.
#: Zero in and find a watermark in the image.
#*1981, USENET 15 Sep 1981 1 on 08 Dec 2006
#*:When you invoke the VAX C compiler with -p for profiling it generates an assembly-language call to a profiling subroutine for which I substituted my own heap-checker, and that enabled me to zero in on a heap-violation which was caused by an array-out-of-bounds condition.
Related terms
zero in on
ru:zero in
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