zombie
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈzɒmbi/
enpr: zŏmʹbē
ipa: /ˈzɑmbi/
rhymes: -ɒmbi
Forms: form: zombies
form: zombi
form: zomby
form: zumbi
Etymology: First attested in 1871.
From a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi, Sranan Tongo dyumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbee (“a spirit or demon”).
Origin from Spanish sombra (“shadow, phantom”) has also been suggested.
May have come through Louisiana Creole zombi (“zombie; ghost”). See also French zombi (“zombie”) (1832).
Senses: examples: text: Betsy Connell: I don't know about zombies, doctor. Just what is a zombie? / Dr. Maxwell: A ghost. A living dead. It's also a drink.
ref: 1943, Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray, I Walked with a Zombie (motion picture):
text: The zombies were having fun
The party had just begun
The guests included Wolf-Man, Dracula, and his son.
ref: 1962, “Monster Mash”, Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Lenny Capizzi (lyrics), performed by Bobby (Boris) Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers:
text: Ashley: Dad passed on a few years back. He's probably still watching, though.
Shepard: He's not a zombie, is he?
ref: 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: SSV Normandy:
text: The zombies first show up 20 minutes in, after Melanie volunteers herself as the next child to mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night. That’s when we learn that Melanie and her classmates are all “hungries,” or people infected with a toxic fungus that turns them into mindless flesh-eating animals.
ref: 2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club:
synonyms: word: deadhead
word: ghoul
word: living dead
word: walker
word: walking dead
word: zed
qualifier: voodoo; horror; voodoo; horror
glosses: A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own.
glosses: An apathetic or slow-witted person.
examples: text: After working for 18 hours on the computer, I was a zombie.
glosses: A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
examples: text: I would advise anyone who does not share its politics — surely the great majority of gay men and lesbians — to shun NOLAG for the anachronistic zombie it is.
ref: 1982 February 13, Wayne Dynes, “Unnatural”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 29, page 4:
glosses: Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
synonyms: intellectual prostitute
glosses: An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
examples: 1986, Maurice J. Bach, The Design of the Unix Operating System, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA, See "Process States and Transitions," p. 147.
9. The process executed the exit system call and is in the zombie state. The process no longer exists, but it leaves a record containing an exit code and some timing statistics for its parent process to collect. The zombie state is the final state of a process.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: 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.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
examples: text: She takes the taxi to the good hotel / Bon marché as far as she can tell / She drinks the zombie from the cocoa shell
ref: 1976, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, “Haitian Divorce”, in The Royal Scam, performed by Steely Dan:
text: The maitre d’ introduced us and I had a zombie with him. Those zombies are wicked.
[…]
I watched Mario and drank zombies out of a thermos.
ref: 1976, Harvard Advocate CX:ii, pages 8 and 380
glosses: A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.
examples: 1944, "Time for Decision," Time (US edition), 6 Nov.,
Had the time come to order Canada's home defense draftees—some 70,000 zombies idling at home—to battle overseas?
glosses: A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe.
examples: text: Traveling in a fried-out Kombi / On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
ref: 1980, Colin Hay, Ron Strykert, “Down Under”, performed by Men at Work:
synonyms: word: bhang
word: benj
word: boo
word: broccoli
word: bud
word: buddha
word: cannabis
word: cheeba
word: choof
word: daccha
word: dank
word: devil's lettuce
word: djamba
word: doja
word: doobage
word: dope
word: endo
word: gage
word: ganja
word: ganj
word: grass
word: green
word: greenery
word: hash
word: hashish
word: hemp
word: herb
word: Mary Jane
word: MJ
word: marihoochie
word: marijuana
word: Mary Joanna
word: method
word: mezz
word: muggle
word: mull
word: pot
word: puff
word: reefer
word: sens
word: sensimillia
word: sensimilla
word: shit
word: sweetleaf
word: tea
word: Texas tea
word: trees
word: twig
word: wacky tobaccy
word: weed
word: yarndie
word: zaza
word: zombie
glosses: Marijuana, or similar drugs.
topics: human-sciences
philosophy
sciences
synonyms: p-zombie
philosophical zombie
glosses: A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
Derived terms: Aberzombie
antizombie
dezombification
dezombify
phone zombie
smartphone zombie
xanbie
zimbo
zombic
zombically
zombie apocalypse
zombie bank
zombie banker
zombie box
zombie business
zombie car
zombie cell
zombie client
zombie company
zombie computer
zombie dance
zombie debt
zombie debtor
zombie deer disease
zombie effect
zombie fire
zombie formalism
zombie fungus
zombie host
zombie hypothesis
zombieing
zombie institution
zombie knife
zombieless
zombie lie
zombielike
zombie master
zombie mortgage
zombieness
zombie network
zombie organization
zombie out
zombie path
zombiephile
zombiephilia
zombie process
zombie program
zombie S&L
Zombie Simpsons
zombie software
zombie star
zombie state
zombie statistic
zombie strip
zombie system
zombie tag
zombie taxon
zombie theory
zombie thought experiment
zombie urbanism
zombie user
zombie version
zombie walk
zombie world
zombie worm
zombification
zombify
zomboid
zombyish