zed

→ Greek: ζεντ (zent)

→ Hindi: ज़ेड (zeḍ)

→ Japanese: ゼット (zetto), ゼッド (zeddo)

→ Korean: 제드 (jedeu)

→ Malay: zed

→ Marathi: जेड (jeḍ)

→ Russian: зэд (zɛd)

→ Thai: แซด (sɛ̂t)

→ Welsh: sèd

From Middle English zed, zedde, zede, from Old French zede, from Late Latin zeta, from Ancient Greek ζῆτα (zêta), from Hebrew ז (zayin) with influence from beta, eta and theta. Letter had rare nonstandard usage in Old English, such as in bezt, where it represented "ts" (compare the German, Italian, and Finnish pronunciation of Z). For the sleep sense, see zzz. The zombie sense comes from the initial letter. Doublet of zeta. Cognate to Spanish zeta, German Zett, French zède, Italian zeta, and perhaps Portuguese zê.

zed-bar

I'm going to go get some zeds.

(colloquial, usually in the plural) Sleep.

A horde of zeds began to shuffle into the shopping mall.


zed

en-verb

zed (third-person singular simple present zeds, present participle zedding, simple past and past participle zedded)

zeds (present singular third-person)
zedding (participle present)
zedded (participle past)
zedded (past)

Zedding hogs. Sleep sippers and spitters. Look at 'em cooking in their own snoring heat. One nose after another.

I guess I must have zedded, for I find a police officer, the same one that nicked me, shaking me.

1992, David Robins, Tarnished vision: crime and conflict in the inner city

"Zedding away." "God, I was having the most awful dream. That you'd got lost by the sea and I couldn't find you and something was chasing me, me and Evie."

(intransitive, informal) To sleep or nap. (Compare zzz, catch some z's.)


undead

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-undead.wav

From Middle English undede, equivalent to un- + dead. The first attestation is from around 1400. Usage as a noun is attested from the early 20th century onwards.

Pertaining to a corpse, though having qualities of life.


zombie

First attested in 1871.
From a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbee (“a spirit or demon”).
Origin from Spanish sombra (“shadow, phantom”) has also been suggested.
May have come through Louisiana Creole [Term?]. See also French zombi (1832).

Betsy Connell: I don't know about zombies, doctor. Just what is a zombie? / Dr. Maxwell: A ghost. A living dead. It's also a drink.

1943, Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray, I Walked with a Zombie (motion picture)

The zombies were having fun
The party had just begun
The guests included Wolf-Man, Dracula, and his son.

1962, “Monster Mash”, Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Lenny Capizzi (lyrics), performed by Bobby (Boris) Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers

Ashley: Dad passed on a few years back. He's probably still watching, though.
Shepard: He's not a zombie, is he?

2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: SSV Normandy

The zombies first show up 20 minutes in, after Melanie volunteers herself as the next child to mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night. That’s when we learn that Melanie and her classmates are all “hungries,” or people infected with a toxic fungus that turns them into mindless flesh-eating animals.

2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The Onion AV Club

(voodoo, horror) A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own.

An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.

She takes the taxi to the good hotel / Bon marché as far as she can tell / She drinks the zombie from the cocoa shell

1976, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen (lyrics and music), “Haitian Divorce”, in The Royal Scam, performed by Steely Dan

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.

1976, Harvard Advocate CX:ii, pages 8 and 380

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?

(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.


deadhead

From dead + head. Some senses are derived from theater jargon (originally spelled dead head) for audience members admitted without paying, which probably arose in analogy to dead weight or deadwood in reference to their lack of contribution to revenue or in reference to their unenthusiastic (dead) response to performances. Perhaps even from Latin caput mortuum, alchemy term for distillation residue. As Paul Quinion writes: Similarly, the term was applied to a dull or lazy person, one who contributes nothing to an enterprise, only in the early years of the twentieth century, well after the theatrical and transport senses had become well established.

(slang) Alternative form of Deadhead (“fan of the rock band The Grateful Dead”)

I was dreaming about working at Wal-Mart before the deadheads came.

2010, Mark Tufo, Sylwia Serwinska, Zombie Fallout, page 148


revenant

19th century. From French revenant, the present participle of revenir (“to return”). Compare revenue.

Earlier you mentioned a ghost, a revenant with which we may contaminate the Emperor.

1969, Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah, published 2008, page 19

And to a revenant who had lived in body after body, died death after death, evanescence could seem like a dream of peace. But the chimaera could ill afford to let soldiers go.

2011, Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

If reports from the time are to be believed, 17th-century Poland was awash in revenants—not vampires, exactly, but proto-zombies who harassed the living by drinking their blood or, less disagreeably, stirring up a ruckus in their homes.

2023 September 5, Franz Lidz, “Undying Dread: A 400-Year-Old Corpse, Locked to Its Grave”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

A supernatural being that returns from the dead; a zombie or ghost.


living dead

(fiction, usually with the) The undead; zombies, vampires, etc.


zombification

en-noun

zombification (countable and uncountable, plural zombifications)

Both the threat and the fact of zombification confer on the bokor a potent means of social control, if he chooses to use it.

1988, Wade Davis, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie


zombielike

en-adj

zombielike (comparative more zombielike, superlative most zombielike)

more zombielike (comparative)
most zombielike (superlative)

Similar to a zombie, having the appearance or character of a zombie.


zombic

zombic (comparative more zombic, superlative most zombic)

more zombic (comparative)
most zombic (superlative)

For a time I wasn't sure of their purpose—neither, it seemed, were they—and I dreaded the possible need for another zombic performance.

1991, C. S. Friedman, The Madness Season, New York: Daw

[…]there has been a gradual process of distillation, leaving just about all the reactionaries, for all their disagreements among themselves, united in the conviction that there is a real difference between a conscious person and a perfect zombie–let's call that intuition the Zombic Hunch–leading them to the thesis of Zombism: that the fundamental flaw in any mechanistic theory of consciousness is that it cannot account for this important difference.

1999 November 28, Daniel Dennett, “The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of an Intuition?”, in Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, Cambridge, London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published 2005, →LCCN, →OCLC, LCC B945.D393S94 2005, page 14

The atoms are in a superposition of both possibilities, and the poor cat, too, is hanging on in a zombic combination of life and death.

2010 November 9, Martin Bojowald, Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe, Knopf, →LCCN, LCC QB981.B684 2010


antizombie

antizombie (comparative more antizombie, superlative most antizombie)

more antizombie (comparative)
most antizombie (superlative)

During the second and third volumes of the series, Nathan Mather, a radical antizombie preacher, and his followers become more and more powerful[…]

2011, Joni Richards Bodart, They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill, page 182


zombocalypse

The makers of "Zombieland" disagree though, and their film is an excellent argument that even the zombocalypse can be funny.

2009, Nate Knife, "'Zombieland' awakens laughter", Clarion (University of Denver), Volume 116, Issue 19, 6 October 2009, page 12

"Dawn of the Dead," the second and arguably best in Romero's canon, depicts survivors that try to wait out the zombocalypse in a monument to consumerism.

2009, Mike Riechers, "Dawn of the Dead", in "Frightful, funny films for Halloween", The Daily Cardinal (University of Wisconsin-Madison), 30 October 2009 - 1 November 2009, page 6

So we all expect that post zombocalypse earth will see us ditch our smartphones, […]

September 2014, Terrence Jarrad, “Hotware”, in PC PowerPlay, number 231, page 78

(slang, horror) The breakdown of society as a result of a zombie outbreak.


zombie apocalypse

en-noun

zombie apocalypse (plural zombie apocalypses)

(horror) A large-scale zombie outbreak associated with the collapse of society.


dezombification

The process of dezombifying somebody or something.


zombieness

The quality of being a zombie, or zombie-like.