Here is a kind of reference to the matter,

"What you don’t use, you don’t pay for. And further: What you do use, you couldn’t hand code any better."

https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/post/zero-cost-abstractions/

Here is the relevant paragraph from Stroustrup, B (2013): The C++ programming language, 4th edition. Pearson Education, page 10:

"What you don’t use you don’t pay for. If programmers can hand-write reasonable code to simulate a language feature or a fundamental abstraction and provide even slightly better performance, someone will do so, and many will imitate. Therefore, a language feature and a fundamental abstraction must be designed not to waste a single byte or a single processor cycle compared to equivalent alternatives. This is known as the zero-overhead principle."

I don't know who came up with "zero cost" abstractions, but it's wrong since there is no zero cost. For the people chanting "zero cost" the cost might not be obvious though.