| 释义 |
zombie|ˈzɒmbɪ|
Also zombi and with capital initial.
[Of W. Afr. origin; cf. Kongo nzambi god, zumbi fetish.]
1. In the West Indies and southern states of America, a soulless corpse said to have been revived by witchcraft; formerly, the name of a snake-deity in voodoo cults of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti.
1819R. Southey Hist. Brazil III. xxxi. 24 Zombi, the title whereby he [chief of Brazilian natives] was called, is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue... NZambi is the word for Deity. 1872Schele de Vere Americanisms 138 Zombi, a phantom or a ghost, not unfrequently heard in the Southern States in nurseries and among the servants. 1886Century Mag. Apr. 815/2 This spiritual influence or potentate is the recognized antagonist and opposite of Obi, the great African manitou or deity, or him whom the Congoes vaguely generalize as Zombi. 1929W. B. Seabrook Magic Island ii. ii. 94 At this very moment, in the moonlight, there are zombies working on this island. 1943R. Ottley New World 46 Adding the zombies, jumbies, and obeah men to the gallery of voodoo characters. 1966G. Greene Comedians iv. 104 Luckily no one dared move on the roads at night; it was the hour when only zombies worked or else the Tontons Macoute. 1979J. Rhys Smile Please 30 Zombies were black shapeless things. They could get through a locked door and you heard them walking up to your bed. You didn't see them, you felt their hairy hands round your throat. 1984Times 26 Jan. 12/6 A zombie, as every schoolboy knows, is a person who has been killed and raised from the dead by sinister voodoo priests called bocors.
2. fig. A dull, apathetic, or slow-witted person. Also as a general term of disparagement. colloq.
1936H. L. Mencken Amer. Language (ed. 4) xi. 587 Any performer [in a film] not a Caucasian is a zombie. 1941H. MacInnes Above Suspicion ix. 80 He nodded..in the direction of those concentrating on the mastication of specially chosen vitamins to build a specially chosen race. ‘Zombies is, I believe, the technical term,’ suggested Richard. 1946J. B. Priestley Bright Day xi. 329 They've spent their lives starving their imagination, just starving it to death. And now they're zombies. 1957J. Braine Room at Top i. 17 To Charles and me it was always Dead Dufton and the councillors and chief officials and anyone we didn't approve of were called zombies. 1961[see love n.1 4]. 1974S. Middleton Holiday xiii. 233 He had no time for her as a zombie, preferring her moody volatility to this flabby acquiescence. 1981P. Carey Bliss iv. 156 They'll give us electric shocks... They'll give us pills and make us zombies. 1984Guardian 22 Oct. 3/1 Mr. Dawson describes the committee as a parliament of zombies.
3. Canad. Mil. slang. In the war of 1939–45, an opprobrious nickname applied to men conscripted for home defence.
1943Daily Express 16 Sept. 4/1 The Canadian Government is reducing its ‘Home Guard’ army... These troops were jocularly dubbed ‘Zombies’, after the Voodoo cult which insists that dead men can be made to walk and act as if they were alive. 1946[see old man 1 a]. 1953D. M. Le Bourdais Nation of North 245 The first men were drafted for service... Contemptuously referred to as ‘zombies’, they were never taken seriously by the military authorities. 1963A. S. Morton Kingdom of Canada 481 A nasty distinction arose between the volunteers for service overseas and the conscripts for home defence, who were given the pungent nickname of ‘zombie’, a West Indian word for impotent spirits. 1978Daily Colonist Mag. (Victoria, B.C.) 1 July 12/1 When the Canadian Army was struggling on the Western Front in the early winter of 1944 and there was an urgent call for reinforcements, yet, in the military camps in Vernon and Terrace the Zombies mutinied when orders came for their movement overseas.
4. A long mixed drink consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice (see quot. 1958).
1942M. K. Rawlings Cross Creek xvii. 221 There is a passion fruit liqueur that is the primary ingredient..of that marvelous..drink, the Zombie. 1958A. L. Simon Dict. Wines, Spirits & Liqueurs 167/1 Zombie,..lime juice;..pineapple juice;..Falernum, or simple syrup;..White Label Rum;..Gold Label Rum;..Jamaica Rum;..Demerara Rum;..apricot liqueur. Shake well and strain... Garnish with..orange and..mint. 1968J. M. Ullman Lady on Fire vi. 80 The bartender..went off to prepare a zombie. Forbes hated zombies, but it was the longest drink that came to mind. 1977Zigzag Apr. 10/1 It's a Polynesian drink, a rum drink..a killer drink. There was a restaurant I found very close to The Cage that I went to every day... Like I would wake up, go there at noon, have a Zombie, go back and start writing.
5. a. attrib.
1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) xviii. 222 Thelonius Monk, whose weird..and pioneering modulations were referred to as ‘Zombie music’ by the musicians themselves, more in awe than anger. 1958A. Wilson Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot i. 77 The breathing zombie orchestra around her. 1966New Statesman 14 Jan. 58/3 A dream-sequence in a cemetery with zombie-hands sprouting like crocuses. 1968P. Ableman Vac xxiv. 113 Stop clashing those zombie lips and glide to the bar. 1973[see one-nighter s.v. one B. 35]. 1976D. Lodge Changing Places v. 162 He could send home, when the time came, some zombie replica of himself.
b. Comb., as zombie-like a., characteristic of or resembling a zombie; lifeless, unfeeling.
1957J. Kerouac On Road (1958) 302 His arms hanging zombie-like at his sides. 1962Times 25 July 13/1 Future..where everybody lives a zombie-like existence. 1975Publishers Weekly 10 Feb. 57/3 White Brian is a zombie-like boy who wanders unseeing and unseen through life. 1983Times 4 Oct. 10/6 On state occasions, a few old men shuffle on to the balcony of the Kremlin and raise their hands in zombie-like salutation.
Hence zombiˈesque, ˈzomboid [-oid] adjs.; ˈzombiism.
1956M. Stearns Story of Jazz (1957) v. 51 The Calinda dance is connected with zombiism in Haiti. 1972Vogue Jan. 7/3 Ponderax..sidetracks the appetite but leaves the character..muted, zombiesque. 1974Observer 3 Feb. 31/5 Zombiesque Security Guard charged with shooting. 1974Radio Times 18 Mar. 22/4 We're not putting up with ‘Zombyism’. The aim of our programme is to give hope. 1975Sunday Times (Colour Suppl.) 20 July 11/3 ‘I'm David Bowie,’ he intones with a zomboid air. 1979Guardian 18 Oct. 11/6 Some of the most zomboid heroines in recent fiction. 1983Daily Tel. 15 Oct. 17/1 Zombi-ism exists and is a social phenomenon that can be explored logically.
▸ Computing. A computer of which another person has gained control without the knowledge of the user, usually as one of many used concertedly to send spam email or to bombard a targeted web site with data so as to make the site inaccessible to other users. Freq. attrib.
1999Infoworld Daily News (Nexis) 9 Dec. The hackers are gaining control of as many as thousands of vulnerable zombie computers in order to magnify and direct their full-scale assault against a single victim from all directions. 2000Computer Weekly 2 Mar. 44/3 The group of machines used for the attack—sometimes called a zombie network—can be anywhere in the Internet, and consists of machines that have security weaknesses due to misconfiguration etc. 2002P. Lilley Hacked, Attacked, & Abused 200 The zombie then transmits a massive amount of packets of useless data to a specific Web site, thus clogging it up and achieving a denial of service attack. |