zombie

The word “zombie” means in folklore and fiction, a reanimated corpse controlled by magic or driven by a mindless urge to attack the living. In plain terms, a reanimated corpse in horror fiction, or, more loosely, someone completely worn out or a hacked computer under remote control.

“Zombie” is pronounced ZOM-bee (/ˈzɑmbi/ in IPA).

Here is “zombie” used in a sentence: “In the film, the survivors barricade themselves in a mall to escape the zombies.”

“Zombie” is a noun.

The word “zombie” comes from French. Traced through Haitian Creole zonbi and French zombi back to a Bantu language, related to Kongo nzambi ("god") and Kimbundu nzumbi ("ghost") — echoed in Caribbean folklore's "jumbie," a wandering spirit.

“Zombie” is a fairly common word in modern English.

“Zombie” has 3 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: in folklore and fiction, a reanimated corpse controlled by magic or driven by a mindless urge to attack the living.

A zombie is a reanimated corpse — a physical, walking dead body from folklore and fiction — while a ghost is the immaterial spirit of a dead person. A zombie has a body but no mind; a ghost has no body at all.

In computing, a zombie is a computer secretly infected with malware and controlled remotely by an attacker without the owner's knowledge. Many such zombies linked together form a "botnet" used for large-scale attacks.

Both are undead creatures of fiction, but a zombie is a mindless reanimated corpse driven to attack the living, while a vampire is typically an intelligent being that survives by drinking blood. Vampires keep their wits and personality; zombies generally do not.