zombie
Definitions
General English
Slang
- noun a dull, vacuous or inert person
- noun a UFO or a rogue or unidentified object or signal
Origin & History of “zombie”
Zombie was originally the name of a snake-god in the voodoo cult of west Africa, and later of the Caribbean, and it comes from a West African language (it is related to Kongo nzambi ‘god’ and zumbi ‘fetish’). It was later applied to a reanimated corpse in the voodoo cult, and a ghoulish sense of humour transferred the English word in the 1930s to a ‘catatonically slow-witted person’.
