A zombie is an imaginary creature that's dead but moves around and tries to eat people. You might have seen it in movies or TV shows.
In popular culture, zombies are often used as a way to tell scary stories. They're usually slow-moving and not very smart, so they're not too threatening. In books, movies, and video games, zombies can be the main enemies that heroes have to fight against. Sometimes, zombies are also used as a metaphor for things like overconsumption or mindless crowds. For example, if you think of people rushing to buy something on sale as "zombies" because they're driven by instinct rather than reason, it's a fun way to describe the situation.
How common is "zombie"?
Word zombie is considered rare in modern English. It appears most frequently in fiction texts and less often in other writings.
Definitions
noun
(voodoo, horror) A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own.
(figuratively) An apathetic or slow-witted person.
(figuratively) A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
Example: After working for 18 hours on the computer, I was a zombie.
(figurative) Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
(computing) 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.
Example: 1986, Maurice J. Bach, The Design of the Unix Operating System, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA, See "Process States and Transitions," p. 147.
9. The process executed the exit system call and is in the zombie state. The process no longer exists, but it leaves a record containing an exit code and some timing statistics for its parent process to collect. The zombie state is the final state of a process.
(computing) A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.
Example: The maitre d’ introduced us and I had a zombie with him. Those zombies are wicked.
[…]
I watched Mario and drank zombies out of a thermos.
(Canada, historical, derogatory) A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe.
Example: 1944, "Time for Decision," Time (US edition), 6 Nov.,
Had the time come to order Canada's home defense draftees—some 70,000 zombies idling at home—to battle overseas?
(Australia, slang) Marijuana, or similar drugs.
(philosophy) A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
