zero (n.)

Zero is nothing, written down. The word goes back to the Arabic sifr, empty, which was itself used to render the Sanskrit śūnya, empty — the name Indian mathematicians gave the mark that held an empty place.¹³

Europe took the word twice. One route latinised it as cifra, which gave English cipher; the other, through Fibonacci’s zephirum, gave Italian zefiro and then zero.¹²³

So the two are the same word arriving by different roads. Cipher carried both senses into English: zero, in its older use, and a code.²

The total came to zero.