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
It is the sort of writing that forces one to wander into the lightless SEO slag pits on a daily basis, becoming progressively more zombified as the labor takes its toll.
From Slate ● Apr. 12, 2023
It’s been zombified into a running internet joke in this post-Elizabeth Holmes moment and is usually half-aspirational and half-tongue-in-cheek.
From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2022
In interstitial moments, characters move as if zombified.
From New York Times ● Mar. 17, 2022
I wonder for a split second if he’s been zombified.
From "Popcorn" by Rob Harrell
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
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
We must take seriously the possibility that the virus is zombifying us – altering our behavior in ways that help perpetuate it.
From Salon ● Mar. 14, 2021
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.
