zero in

Definition

To focus one's aim; to zoom in and center (on something).

Etymology

The phrase possibly comes from adjusting a sighting mechanism of a firearm to minimise the discrepancy between where the sight points and where a bullet lands on a target. Another possible source is the Cartesian coordinate system in mathematics. In the coordinate system, points are defined relative to an origin (point of reference) labeled O, which has an (x,y) coordinate pair of (0,0).

Example Sentences

• "The pilot zeroed in on the bunker and launched a guided missile."
• "Zero in and find a watermark in the image."
• "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."