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zombie

Pronunciation: /ˈzɒmbi/

The English word “zombie” has 14 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. An apathetic or slow-witted person.
  4. A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
  5. Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
  6. An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
  7. 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.
  8. A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
  9. A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.
  10. A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe.
  11. Marijuana, or similar drugs.
  12. A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
  13. A person whose senses and faculties are severely dulled by drug use.
  14. A person with a big appetite.

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”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.