A Spirited History of the word Zombie
Hello,
In honour of Halloween later this week I’ll explore a spooky word today – zombie. I don’t have any zombie photos to hand so I’m illustrating with a traditional Irish jack o’lantern, a carved turnip, from the National Museum, which is equally scary.
“Traditional Irish halloween Jack-o’-lantern” by Rannpháirtí anaithnid at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Traditional_Irish_halloween_Jack-o%27-lantern.jpg#/media/File:Traditional_Irish_halloween_Jack-o%27-lantern.jpgZombie (also spelled without the final e) joined the English dictionary in the late 1700s originally to describe spirits of the dead who torment the living. The meaning varied significantly with time.
In 1819 it was used as a title for chief in an Afro-Brazilian context, possibly as a direct borrowing of the word nzambi (deity) from Angolan. It was also used as a name for pets in the 1800s (without the e) – which is pretty strange to my mind.
In 1904 the Grand Zombi was a term for a deity in Voodoo practices in English (but presumably earlier in other countries).
In 1910 a zombie was a witch.
By 1929 William Seabrook used the term zombie in his travel book “The Magic Island” with the meaning we’d recognise today, a re-animated corpse, after encountering this idea in Haiti. Seabrook was an American occultist, explorer, and writer. His book inspired Hollywood and we’re still finding horrific zombies in movies today.
By 1936 zombie was also used to describe any slow-witted person.
Generally zombie is accepted as having a West African etymology but it’s beyond my skills to pick the exact source. Candidates include zumbi (fetish, amulet) in Kikongo, djumbi (ghost) in Kikongo, and nzambi (deity) from Angolan.
Until next time Happy Halloween, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
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