000
The telephone number for emergency services in AustraliaThe telephone number for emergency services in Australia.
Meaning
1 sensesThe telephone number for emergency services in Australia.
When you call 000, the Telstra operator usually answers the phone with "Emergency. Police, fire, or ambulance?"
Origin
A variant of the British 999, originally selected as an appropriate number for rotary-dialA variant of the British 999, originally selected as an appropriate number for rotary-dial telephones and adapted in Australia because of the need to dial an initial 0 from remote exchanges to connect to the main trunk lines.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.