zone

From Latin zōna, from Ancient Greek ζώνη (zṓnē, “girdle, belt”).

• (General American) enPR: zōn, IPA^(key): /zoʊn/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /zəʊn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊn

zone (plural zones)

1. (geography, now rare) Each of the five regions of the earth's surface into which it was divided by climatic differences, namely the torrid zone (between the tropics), two temperate zones (between the tropics and the polar circles), and two frigid zones (within the polar circles).
   • 1567, Ovid, translated by Arthur Golding, Metamorphoses, section I:

     And as two Zones doe cut the Heaven upon the righter side, / And other twaine upon the left likewise the same devide, / The middle in outragious heat exceeding all the rest: / Even so likewise through great foresight to God it seemed best, / The earth encluded in the same should so devided bee […].

   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: , 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition I, section 2, member 4, subsection vi:

     To avoid which, we will take any pains  […] ; we will dive to the bottom of the sea, to the bowels of the earth, five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred fathom deep, through all five zones, and both extremes of heat and cold […].

   • 1841, George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume 2, page 270:

     And while idle curiosity may take its walk in shady avenues by the ocean side, commerce […] defies every wind, outrides every tempest, and invades every zone.

2. Any given region or area of the world.
3. A given area distinguished on the basis of a particular characteristic, use, restriction, etc.

   There is a no-smoking zone that extends 25 feet outside of each entrance.

   The white zone is for loading and unloading only.

   Files in the Internet zone are blocked by default, as a security measure.

4. (by extension) A restricted category or virtual place.

   The discussion was veering off into a danger zone.

5. A band or area of growth encircling anything.

   a zone of evergreens on a mountain; the zone of animal or vegetable life in the ocean around an island or a continent

   • 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; , London: John Murray, , →OCLC:

     Some of the lagoons, said to have subterranean outlets, have no visible ones; the inclosing island, in such cases, being a complete zone of emerald.

6. A band or stripe extending around a body.
7. (crystallography) A series of planes having mutually parallel intersections.
8. (baseball, informal) The strike zone.

   That pitch was low and away, just outside the zone.

9. (ice hockey) Every of the three parts of an ice rink, divided by two blue lines.

   Players are off side, if they enter the attacking zone before the puck.

10. (handball) A semicircular area in front of each goal.
    • 1974, Franko Blazic with Zorko Soric, Team Handball‎, page 31:

      The defender playing at the top of the zone is nine to fourteen metres out from the goal line.

11. (chiefly sports) A high-performance phase or period.

    I just got in the zone late in the game: everything was going in.

12. (basketball, American football) A defensive scheme where defenders guard a particular area of the court or field, as opposed to a particular opposing player.
13. (networking) That collection of a domain's DNS resource records, the domain and its subdomains, that are not delegated to another authority.
14. (networking, dated) A logical group of network devices on AppleTalk (an obsolete networking protocol).
15. (now literary) A belt or girdle.
    • 17th c, John Dryden, 2005, Pygmalion and the Statue, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (editors), The Poems of John Dryden: Volume Five: 1697-1700, page 263,

      Her tapered fingers too with rings are graced, / And an embroidered zone surrounds her slender waist.

    • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker ; nd by Robert Boulter ; nd Matthias Walker, , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, lines 211-220:

      […] Or should she, confident, / As sitting queen adored on beauty's throne, / Descend with all her winning charms begirt / To enamour, as the zone of Venus once / Wrought that effect on Jove, so fables tell : / How would one look from his majestic brow, / Seated as on the top of virtue's hill, / Discountenance her despised, and put to rout / All her array; her female pride deject, / Or turn to reverent awe ? […]

    • 1779, Thomas Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas from Balambangan, page 21:

      From the waiſt downwards, they wore a looſe robe, girt with an embroidered zone or belt about the middle, with a large claſp of gold, and a precious ſtone.

    • 18th c, William Collins, The Passions: An Ode for Music, 1810, Alexander Chalmers, Samuel Johnson (editors), The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 13, page 204,

      Love fram'd with Mirth a gay fantastic round, / Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,

    • 1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, LV, 1827, The Works of Lord Byron, including The Suppressed Poems, page 565,

      There was the Donna Julia, whom to call / Pretty were but to give a feeble notion / Of many charms in her as natural / As sweetness to the flower, or salt to ocean, / Her zone to Venus, or his bow to Cupid / (But this last simile is trite and stupid).

    • 1844, Charles Dickens, The life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1865, Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI: Martin Chuzzlewit—Volume II, page 421,

      it was the prettiest thing to see her girding on the precious little zone, and yet obliged to have assistance because her fingers were in such terrible perplexity; .

    • 1886 October – 1887 January, H Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

      `Look now on me, Kallikrates!' and with a sudden motion she shook her gauzy covering from her, and stood forth in her low kirtle and her snaky zone, in her glorious radiant beauty and her imperial grace, rising from her wrappings, as it were, like Venus from the wave, or Galatea from her marble, or a beatified spirit from the tomb.

16. (geometry) The curved surface of a frustum of a sphere, the portion of surface of a sphere delimited by parallel planes.
    • 1835, Charles Davies, David Brewster (editors and translators), Adrien-Marie Legendre, Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry, , page 293,

      To find the surface of a spherical zone.

      Rule.—Multiply the altitude of the zone by the circumference of a great circle of the sphere, and the product will be the surface (Book VIII. Prop. X. Sch. 1).

    • 2014, John Bird, Engineering Mathematics, page 183:

      A zone of a sphere is the curved surface of a frustum. […] Determine, correct to 3 significant figures (a) the volume of the frustum of the sphere, (b) the radius of the sphere and (c) the area of the zone formed.

17. (geometry, loosely, perhaps by meronymy) A frustum of a sphere.
18. A circuit; a circumference.
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book V, lines 558 to 560:

      And we have yet large day; for scarce the sun / Hath finish'd half his journey, and scarce begins / His other half in the great zone of heaven.

• (area distinguished on the basis of a particular characteristic etc): area, belt, district, region, section, sector, sphere, territory
• (baseball: strike zone):
• (handball: area in front of a goal): crease
• (high performance phase or period):
• (networking: that collection of a domain's DNS resource records):
• (computing: logical group of network devices on AppleTalk):
• (religion: belt worn by priests in the Greek Orthodox church):

• (religion: belt worn by priests in the Greek Orthodox church): alb, epigonation, epimanikion, epitrachelion, maniple, mitre, omophorion, rhason, sakkos, sticharion

• → Korean: 존 (jon)
• → Punjabi: ਜ਼ੋਨ (zon)

• zone file

zone (third-person singular simple present zones, present participle zoning, simple past and past participle zoned)

1. (transitive) To divide into or assign to sections or areas.

   Please zone off our staging area, a section for each group.

   • 2018, Bertrand Dufrasne, Christian Burns, Wenzel Kalabza, IBM XIV Storage System Business Continuity Functions, page 331:

     The high-level process is to shut down the server, unzone the server from Generation 2, zone the server to Gen3, and then define and activate the data-migration (DM) volumes between the Generation 2 and Gen3.

2. (transitive) To define the property use classification of (an area).

   This area was zoned for industrial use.

3. (intransitive, slang) To enter a daydream state temporarily, for instance as a result of boredom, fatigue, or intoxication; to doze off.

   I must have zoned while he was giving us the directions.

   • 1996, Byron Coley, liner notes for the album "Piece for Jetsun Dolma" by Thurston Moore)

     Everyone just put their goddamn heads together and zoned. # (transitive, archaic, poetic) To girdle or encircle.(Can we find and add a quotation of Keats to this entry?)

4. To assign to a restricted category.

   We've zoned each other as friends; we'll never be anything more.

• (enter a daydream state): zone out, doze off (if also sleeping; See Thesaurus:fall asleep).

• zonal
• zone in, zone in on
• zone off
• zoner
• zoning

• exclusion zone
• friend zone
• time zone
• zone out
• zoning law
• zone of employment

• Enzo, Zeno, noze, zeon

From Latin zōna, from Ancient Greek ζώνη (zṓnē, “girdle, belt”).

• IPA^(key): /soːnɘ/,
• Homophone: sone

zone c (singular definite zonen, plural indefinite zoner)

1. zone

• område

Borrowed from French zone or Middle French zone, from Latin zona, from Ancient Greek ζώνη (zṓnē).

• IPA^(key): /ˈzɔː.nə/, , /ˈzoːnə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: zo‧ne
• Rhymes: -ɔːnə, -oːnə

zone f (plural zonen or zones, diminutive zonetje n)

1. zone

Borrowed from Latin zōna.

• IPA^(key): /zon/

• Audio:

  (file)

zone f (plural zones)

1. zone

zone

1. inflection of zoner:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• “zone”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

• Enzo, onze

zonê

1. Nonstandard form of zona.

zone f

1. plural of zona

• Enzo, Zeno

zone

1. inflection of zonar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key):

zone f pl

1. plural of zonă