zombie
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "zombie", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "zombie" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "zombie" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
zombie is aEnglishnoun. It means: A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own. Pronounced /ˈzɒmbi/. It ranks #7,876 in English word frequency. Often confused with Zambia.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | zombie |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈzɒmbi/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #7,876 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for zombie is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈzɒmbi/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,876 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for zombie, with forms such as "ozmbie", "zmobie", and "zobmie". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "Zambia", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: First attested in the 18th century. From a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi, Sranan Tongo dyumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbee (“a spirit or demon”). May have come throug… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is zombie, spelled Z-O-M-B-I-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own.
- 2An apathetic or slow-witted person.
- 3A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion.
- 4Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
- 5An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
- 6A process or task which has terminated but has not been removed from the list of processes, typically because it has an unresponsive parent process.
- 7A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.
- 8A cocktail of rum and fruit juices.
- 9A conscripted member of the Canadian military during World War II who was assigned to home defence rather than to combat in Europe.
- 10Marijuana, or similar drugs.
- 11A hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.
Etymology
First attested in the 18th century. From a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi, Sranan Tongo dyumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbee (“a spirit or demon”). May have come through Louisiana Creole zombi (“zombie; ghost”). See also French zombi (“zombie”). A possible origin from Spanish sombra (“shadow, phantom”) has also been suggested.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ozmbie,zmobie,zobmie,zombbie,zombei,zomibe,zommbie,zzombie
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for zombie
Misspelling Variants of "zombie"
Frequency rank: #7,876 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Z in our English index: