Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

zombie

UK /ˈzɒmbi/ · US /ˈzɑmbi/ noun

Forms zombies zombi zomby zumbi

  1. noun (voodoo) A person, usually undead, animated by unnatural forces (such as magic), with no soul or will of his or her own, typically being slow, obedient, and harmless unless directed to be harmful.
  2. noun (horror) A dead person, reanimated through some fictional agency as a fungus, virus, or the like, that has an insatiable desire to eat living humans, typically depicted as aggressive, fast moving, and infectious.
  3. noun (figuratively) An apathetic or slow-witted person.
  4. noun (figuratively) A human being in a state of extreme mental exhaustion. “After working for 18 hours on the computer, I was a zombie.”
  5. noun (figurative) Someone or something that should be dead but is not.
  6. noun An information worker who has signed a nondisclosure agreement.
  7. noun (computing) A process or task which has terminated but has not been removed from the list of processes, typically because it has an unresponsive parent process.
  8. noun (computing) A computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker wants it to do without the user's knowledge.

Synonyms

living dead deadhead walker walking dead zed intellectual prostitute bhang benj boo broccoli bud buddha cannabis cheeba choof daccha dank devil's lettuce djamba doja zombi zombi spirit zombie spirit snake god automaton

Etymology

First attested in the 18th century. Partially through Louisiana Creole zombi (“zombie; ghost”), Haitian Creole zonbi (“zombie”), and French zombi (“zombie”). Ultimately from a Bantu language. Compare Kongo nzambi (“god”), zumbi (“fetish”), and Kimbundu nzumbi (“ghost”) (see Portuguese zumbi, Sranan Tongo dyumbi), and Caribbean folklore's jumbie (“a spirit or demon”).

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “zombie”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details