Definition of "hypocenter" []

• The surface position directly beneath the center of a nuclear explosion. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He wasn't near the hypocenter, or ground zero, for the blast in August 1945, but went there two days later, putting him in a category known as "early entrants.""
• "As a 13-year-old middle-school student, he approached the hypocenter two days after the blast, he says, to look for bodies of his classmates."
• "Those reduced by human hands were cremated on makeshift altars at a temple that once stood at the present site of the mound, one-half mile from the hypocenter of the atomic blast."