ground zero 
noun
1The point on the earth’s surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb.In fact, no bomb fragments were ever found, and no one could be sure what car or truck exploded, yet ground zero was established… with no car....
- The natural reluctance of rescuers to get close enough to ground zero after a nuclear detonation to be much use to survivors is another.
- The other day I stuck my camera out of a car window and the sound I got was like ground zero at a nuclear blast!
1.1 (Ground Zero) The site of the World Trade Center in New York, destroyed by terrorists on 11 September 2001.
1.2A site of devastation, disaster, or violent attack: the pictures from Indonesia’s ground zero are beyond description...
- In Indonesia's Aceh province, fast emerging as the quake's ground zero, survivors scrabbled for food among mud and corpses.
- But Madrid's ground zero panicked the minds and awoke the demagogues, ready to invert responsibility.
- The people at London's ground zero were sounding like the Spanish after their train bombings.
2A starting point or base for an activity: if you’re starting at ground zero in terms of knowledge, go to the library...
- And then it was almost worse because then we went really down to ground zero in terms of our own emotions because we just could not believe that he would survive.
- ‘We started from ground zero,’ Wilson says in his typical American - speak.
- We got in there with a pen and a pad and started at ground zero.
- parishad
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- parish communion
- parish council
- parish councillor
- parish councilor
- parished
- parishen
- parish Eucharist
- parish house
- parishing
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- parish kirk
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- parish-pump
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- parish register