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Zombie

//ˈzɒmbi// noun, slang

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own.

    "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."

  2. 2
    several kinds of rum with fruit juice and usually apricot liqueur wordnet
  3. 3
    An apathetic or slow-witted person. figuratively
  4. 4
    someone who acts or responds in a mechanical or apathetic way wordnet
  5. 5
    A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion. figuratively

    "After working for 18 hours on the computer, I was a zombie."

Show 11 more definitions
  1. 6
    a dead body that has been brought back to life by a supernatural force wordnet
  2. 7
    Someone or something that should be dead but is not. figuratively

    "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."

  3. 8
    a god of voodoo cults of African origin worshipped especially in West Indies wordnet
  4. 9
    An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
  5. 10
    (voodooism) a spirit or supernatural force that reanimates a dead body wordnet
  6. 11
    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.

    "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."

  7. 12
    A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
  8. 13
    A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.

    "She takes the taxi to the good hotel / Bon marché as far as she can tell / She drinks the zombie from the cocoa shell"

  9. 14
    A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe. Canada, derogatory, historical

    "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?"

  10. 15
    Marijuana, or similar drugs. Australia, slang

    "Traveling in a fried-out Kombi / On a hippie trail, head full of zombie"

  11. 16
    A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

Etymology

First attested in the 18th century. 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”). May have come through Louisiana Creole zombi (“zombie; ghost”). See also French zombi (“zombie”). A possible origin from Spanish sombra (“shadow, phantom”) has also been suggested.

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