zombify
Americanverb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of zombify
First recorded in 1980–85
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 team sequenced the parasite’s genome some time ago and has pinpointed a handful of proteins that it may use to zombify its victims.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2021
Everyone who studies the jewel wasp knows it stings the roach twice—once in the first thoracic ganglion to paralyze the front legs and once in the brain to zombify the roach.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 16, 2021
It became necessary to zombify the ant, to make it do a few things it wouldn’t ordinarily do.
From New York Times ● Oct. 24, 2019
Fungi that parasitize insects may also use neurotransmitter-mimicking chemicals to zombify their victims.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2018
It was George Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968 that set the modern movie template of a few intact survivors besieged by an undead throng eager to eat or zombify them.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 17, 2013
"When I first came out of hospital the medications were so strong I was zombified - I had no energy at all," he said.
From BBC ● Feb. 28, 2025
After all, no matter what momfluencers may have you believe, most children spend at least some time zombified in front of cartoons at some point or other.
From Slate ● Sep. 26, 2023
Christian Bale delivers a genuinely skin-crawling turn as a zombified villain named Gorr the God Butcher, who so closely resembles both Voldemort and “The Nun” that Warner Bros. might want to sue.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 5, 2022
Perhaps City can take solace in that Paris Saint-Germain and defending champion Chelsea were also zombified by whatever wizardry Madrid somehow conjures up at the biggest moments of the biggest games.
From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2022
I hated how zombified his video games made him.
From "Wonder" by R. J. Palacio
Let’s hear it for well-targeted scorn: An iPad-like tablet with a zombifying effect on children is the villain of “Toy Story 5.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
"So-and-so's a fiend, zombifying everything that's got its eyes closed. Don't fall asleep around her!"
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2023
The show takes place in the wreckage of a pandemic, when a mutant strain of the zombifying fungus makes the leap to humans.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 10, 2023
But only in recent years have researchers probed how these fungi go about zombifying ants.
From New York Times ● Oct. 24, 2019
The trailer teases the group's attempts to get to DC and — hopefully — deliver a cure for the zombifying infection.
From The Verge ● Jul. 25, 2014
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.
