zombie
Americannoun
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(in Vodou)
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a mute and will-less body, robbed of its soul and given the semblance of life by a supernatural force, usually for manual labor or some evil purpose.
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the supernatural force itself.
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(in popular culture) an undead creature with a reanimated human body, typically depicted in science fiction or horror stories as contagious to the living by bite and vulnerable only to serious head trauma.
In the movie, survivors of the apocalypse try to build a barricade to keep the zombies out.
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Informal.
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a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.
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an eccentric or peculiar person.
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a snake god worshiped in West Indian and Brazilian religious practices of African origin.
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a tall drink made typically with several kinds of rum, citrus juice, and often apricot liqueur.
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Canadian Slang. an army conscript assigned to home defense during World War II.
adjective
noun
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a person who is or appears to be lifeless, apathetic, or totally lacking in independent judgment; automaton
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a supernatural spirit that reanimates a dead body
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a corpse brought to life in this manner
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the snake god of voodoo cults in the West Indies, esp Haiti, and in scattered areas of the southern US
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the python god revered in parts of West Africa
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a piece of computer code that instructs an infected computer to send a virus on to other computer systems
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of zombie
First recorded in 1810–20; from Louisiana French, Haitian Creole zonbi, from a Bantu language, e.g., Kongo nzambi “god,” zumbi “fetish,” or Kimbundu nzambi “god”
Explanation
If you've ever watched a zombie movie, you know that a zombie is a terrifying but slow-moving monster, a dead body that moves as if it's alive and has a taste for human flesh. There is an entire literary genre that features zombies and the people who are hunting or fighting them off, as well as scores of films about zombies. A zombie is an ideal movie monster, horrible to look at and nearly impossible to kill. The word zombie comes from West Africa, related to both the Kikongo word zumbi, or "fetish," and the Kimbundu word nzambi, or "god."
Vocabulary lists containing zombie
The Grim Reader: Wicked Words of Grave Importance for Halloween
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New Kid
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A Mythical Menagerie
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“The whole time, I was yelling on Twitter about how he’s got to stop it: the AI videos are gonna hurt him, the Basura stuff, the zombie stuff. Like, stop it! Stop it!”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
But she then said she had to enter what she called "zombie hacker mode" to prepare for the next day.
From BBC ● May 27, 2026
Aging research is entering a new phase as scientists rethink one of the body's most mysterious cell types: senescent cells, often nicknamed "zombie cells."
From Science Daily ● May 22, 2026
How could they not be a little worried to be facing a reanimated zombie team that blitzed 56-win Boston?
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 4, 2026
Honestly, it was almost worth it for Edie to call me a zombie freak just to see Fina defend me like that.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
Residents "fight like zombies" for every bit of supply delivered to her village "because we are starving", she added.
From BBC ● Dec. 25, 2025
“A lot of people are scared of these human beings because they look at them like they’re zombies or something,” Miranda said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 3, 2025
Yet despite the local ecclesiastical authorities approving the scene, the installation in central Brussels has come under fire online since opening on Friday, with right-wing Belgian politician Georges-Louis Bouchez even comparing the figures to "zombies".
From Barron's ● Dec. 2, 2025
We are quickly becoming a nation of zombies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 25, 2025
About two dozen zombies obeyed, struggling to form a defensive ring around Frank and his friends.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
