Associated Press, “What Do You Call That New Skyscraper in New York?”

June 15, 2012

Deepti Hajela, “What Do You Call That New Skyscraper in New York?” (Associated Press, June 15, 2012)

Ground zero originated at the end of World War II as a military term for the detonation site of atomic bombs, then came to be used more broadly to mean a center of activity, according to linguist Ben Zimmer, who has written on the subject. News organizations began using the term for the destroyed World Trade Center within just hours of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

“It served as a very useful label in the same way that ‘9/11’ became a shorthand,” Zimmer says.

But “as the building has risen, using that term ground zero seems inappropriate because it is the site of construction and not destruction,” he says. “If you’re going to work in that building, you wouldn’t say you work at ground zero. That wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

He says ground zero could remain common usage in discussing such things as illnesses suffered by those who cleaned up the site, since “that’s specifically anchored to that time and place, what they experienced.”

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