What it means
صفر (sefr) is the Persian word for “zero,” the number that represents nothing or the absence of quantity. It was borrowed directly from Arabic sifr, which was itself coined by Arab mathematicians as a translation of the Sanskrit word shunya, meaning emptiness or void. The Arabic term sifr later passed into medieval Latin as zephirum and eventually gave English the word “cipher.” In everyday Persian, صفر is used in mathematics, phone numbers, sports scores, and temperature readings. A common synonym in counting contexts is هیچ (hich), meaning “nothing,” but هیچ carries a more abstract or emphatic tone and cannot replace صفر in numerical contexts.
How to use it
- نمرهام صفر شد. (Namre-am sefr shod.) “I got a zero on my grade.”
- دما رفت زیر صفر. (Damâ raft zir-e sefr.) “The temperature dropped below zero.”
- شمارهاش با صفر شروع میشه. (Shomâre-ash bâ sefr shoru’ mishe.) “His number starts with zero.”
- بازی صفر به صفر تموم شد. (Bâzi sefr be sefr tamum shod.) “The match ended zero to zero.”
Cultural note
The concept of zero as a number was a revolutionary mathematical idea, and Arab scholars played a central role in transmitting it from India to the wider world during the Islamic Golden Age. Persian mathematicians such as al-Khwarizmi, writing in Arabic in ninth-century Baghdad, helped develop the decimal positional system that made zero indispensable. Today صفر is deeply embedded in Iranian daily life, from phone prefixes to exam grades, and a score of صفر on a school test carries the same dread it does in any culture.