Names for the number 0 in English Names for the number 0 in English Zero is the usual name for the number 0 in English. In British English "nought" is also used. In American English "naught" is used occasionally for zero, but as with British English, "naught" is more often used as an archaic word for nothing. "Nil", "love", and "duck" are used by different sports for scores of zero. It is quite common in English to describe decades with a plural of the first year of the decade for example "the nineties" which can be written as "the 90s". There was a debate on what to
Zero game piles or a Hackenbush diagram with nothing drawn on it. The Sprague–Grundy theorem applies to impartial games (in which each move may be played by either player) and asserts that every such game has an equivalent Sprague–Grundy value, a "nimber", which indicates the number of pieces in an equivalent position in the game of nim. All second-player win games have a Sprague–Grundy value of zero, though they may not be the zero game. For example, normal Nim with two identical piles (of any size) is not the zero game, but has value 0, since it is a second-player winning situation