zombie
Meanings
noun
- A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own, typically being slow, obedient, and harmless unless directed to be harmful.
- A dead person, reanimated through some fictional agency as a fungus, virus, or the like, that has an insatiable desire to eat living humans, typically depicted as aggressive, fast moving, and infectious.
- An apathetic or slow-witted person.
- A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
- Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
- An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
- A process or task which has terminated but has not been removed from the list of processes, typically because it has an unresponsive parent process.
- A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
- A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.
- A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe.
- Marijuana, or similar drugs.
- A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
First attested in the 18th century. Partially through Louisiana Creole zombi (“zombie; ghost”), Haitian Creole zonbi (“zombie”), and French zombi (“zombie”). Ultimately from a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi, Sranan Tongo dyumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbie (“a spirit or demon”). A possible origin from Spanish sombra (“shadow, phantom”) has also been suggested.
Synonyms
Derived words
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