In folklore and fiction, dead bodies that have been brought back to life and can move around, usually portrayed as mindless and dangerous.
From Haitian Creole 'zonbi,' likely from Kikongo 'nzambi' meaning spirit or god. The word entered English through Caribbean folklore about voodoo magic in the 1800s.
The zombie concept came from real enslaved people's beliefs in Haiti—the horror of being a zombie originally represented the terror of being worked to death without autonomy, which makes fictional zombies way more serious than they seem!
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