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zombie.

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.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈzɒmbi/Received-Pronunciation/ˈzɑmbi/General-American
  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.

    figuratively
  4. A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.

    figuratively
    After working for 18 hours on the computer, I was a zombie.
  5. Someone or something that should be dead but is not.

    figuratively
  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.

    Canada · derogatory · historical
  11. Marijuana, or similar drugs.

    Australia · slang
  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.

    slang
    I'm worried about that guy on the corner, he is a fent zombie.
  14. A person with a big appetite.

    Philippines · slang
Where this word comes from

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, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.