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)

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.

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.


undead

In the zombie movie, an army of the undead accosted some unsuspecting teenagers.

"Were another of the Un-Dead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him."

1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, New York: Doubleday & McClure, published 1899, page xxiv. 319:

Harley got devoured by the undead / Lurking down in some old wizard's tomb / You can say there's no such thing as zombies / But that's how Harley Warren met his doom

2006, The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, “Harley Got Devoured by the Undead”, in An Even Scarier Solstice:

It’s an episode of characters returning to their own pasts as different people. They can retrench like Cersei, back on her bullshit, I mean, warpath. Or they can adapt, like The Hound. Neither way necessarily ensures success, but we know the archmaester isn’t unequivocally right. We’ve seen dragons reborn and armies of the undead. I wouldn’t be so sure that Wall will stand forever.

2017 July 16, Brandon Nowalk, “Chickens and dragons come home to roost on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club:

(horror fiction) Those creatures which are undead; that is, dead yet still animate.

nemrtvý

those creatures which are dead but still animate


undead

en-noun

undead (plural undead or (rare) undeads)

"You will do me a service," the undead said to him.

Innocent VIII lent credibility to the actual existence of undeads, an action that perpetuated, and even stimulated, vampire hysteria.

1997, Carol Margaret Davison, Paul Simpson-Housley, Bram Stoker's Dracula: sucking through the century, 1897-1997:

(horror fiction) A creature that is undead; that is, dead but still animate.


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, →ISBN, →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.


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”)


walker

→ Irish: válcaeir

→ Persian: واکر (vâker)

From Middle English walkere (“one who walks, traveller”), equivalent to walk + -er.

inh

I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.

1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter VIII, in Emma: […], volume I, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC, page 118:

We hired a walker for the dogs during the day.

2005, Carlo De Vito, 10 Secrets My Dog Taught Me: Life Lessons from a Man's Best Friend, page 88:

The agent noun of to walk: a person who walks or a thing which walks, especially a pedestrian or a participant in a walking race.

(often in the plural) A shoe designed for comfortable walking.

(cricket) A batsman or batswoman who directly walks off the field when out without waiting for the umpire's decision.

A single mother of three, Rachel is what Facebook users call as ^([sic]) “walker,” or an online sex worker. Using a dummy account, she posts her sexy photos and informs page visitors that she’s available for sex in exchange for money.

2019 June 22, Charisse Ursal, “Social media lures young people to engage in sex for money”, in Philippine Daily Inquirer:

(Philippines) A prostitute, streetwalker.


revenant

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

Sometimes […] semi-identifications could be made on the basis of names. Henry VII's son Arthur was hailed as a revenant in this way.

2007, John Burrow, A History of Histories, Penguin, published 2009, page 184:

For granting even that Religion were dead; that it had died, half-centuries ago, with unutterable Dubois; or emigrated lately, to Alsace, with Necklace-Cardinal Rohan; or that it now walked as goblin revenant with Bishop Talleyrand of Autun; yet does not the Shadow of Religion, the Cant of Religion, still linger?

1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):

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

1969, Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah, published 2008, →ISBN, 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, →ISBN:

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, →ISBN:

[…]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, →ISBN, →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, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC QB981.B684 2010:


antizombie

Let's find that bibulous "antizombie" state of pure experience.

1998, Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak, Alwyn Scott, Toward a Science of Consciousness II, →ISBN:

Finally, in chapter 6 I revisit certain questions, especially concerning the nature of subjectivity, in the context of an exploration of various anti-zombie arguments.

2003, Joseph Levine, Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness, →ISBN, page 10:

The perfect experiment suggests the anti-zombie: a creature which is conscious, perhaps in just one respect, as in Cohen and Dennett«s isolation of colour consciousness, but gives no sign of it.

2016 -, William Seager, Theories of Consciousness: An Introduction and Assessment, →ISBN:

We must all be functionalists. By demolishing the intuitions, the anti-zombie argument removes what has long been seen as a major problem for physicalism and functionalism. And by bringing out the fact that consciousness depends on a number of different information-processing capacities, that argument hints at what it really is.

2017, Robert Kirk, Robots, Zombies and Us: Understanding Consciousness, →ISBN:

(philosophy) The inverse of the philosophical zombie; an exact duplicate of a human being which certainly and necessarily does have conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.


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.


Richonne

Though Glenn and Maggie and "Richonne" are monogamous, heteronormative relationships: one man, one woman, and clear relationship roles, the roles are interchangeable and fluid dependent on the situation.

2017, Amanda Taylor, “Love and Marriage in the Time of The Walking Dead”, in Ashley Szanter, Jessica K. Richards, editors, Romancing the Zombie: Essays on the Undead as Significant "Other", page 87:

The Walking Deads Richone' was a big deal because it elevated Michonne from sidekick to romantic female lead.

2019, Sumiko Saulson, “From Sidekick to Romantic Lead: Rise of the Strong Black Woman”, in Valerie Estelle Frankel, editor, Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 2. Essays on Television Representations, 2013-2019, page 93:

Brown's longstanding advocacy for the “Richonne” ship is especially illustrative to consider.

2019, Suzanne Scott, Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry, page 137:

(fandom slang) The ship of characters Rick Grimes and Michonne from the television series The Walking Dead.


Bethyl

For fans of the “Bethyl” romance, this would also allow Daryl to carry on a relationship with Beth free of the guilt of hurting Carol’s feelings.

2014 November 17, Lindsay Putnam, “Who will be the next to die on ‘The Walking Dead’?”, in New York Post:

While there are many die-hard Caryl and Bethyl shippers who have argued for Daryl’s heterosexuality, others have maintained that Daryl is gay.

2014 December 1, Amanda Michelle Steiner, “The Walking Dead: Creator Robert Kirkman Finally Reveals Daryl's Sexuality”, in People:

And before you know it, you've exploded vicious rhetoric on some poor Bethyl shipper on Tumblr who never saw it coming.

2016, Kathleen Smith, The Fangirl Life: A Guide to All the Feels and Learning How to Deal, unnumbered page:

(fandom slang) The ship of characters Beth Greene and Daryl Dixon from the television series The Walking Dead.


Caryl

As much fun as it would be to imagine a "Darol" or "Caryl" relationship it just isn't true.

2016, Wayne Yuen, “Gruesome Walkers”, in Wayne Yuen, editor, The Ultimate Walking Dead and Philosophy: Hungry for More, page 247:

Richonne just seemed like something all of Tumblr was screaming for but might not ever happen (like Caryl, though I'm still gunning for that one), but now it's actually real.

2016 March 17, Danielle S. Tepper, “Top Five TV Power Couples”, in Town & Country Gazette, page 40:

Kirkman quoted the Internet page "Quotes On Caryl" dedicated to the Carol-Daryl relationship, […]

2018, Rikke Schubart, Mastering Fear: Women, Emotions, and Contemporary Horror, unnumbered page:

(fandom slang) The ship of characters Carol Peletier and Daryl Dixon from the television series The Walking Dead.


dezombification

The process of dezombifying somebody or something.


zombieness

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