zombic

comparative more zombic · superlative most zombic

1. Relating to zombies.

   The atoms are in a superposition of both possibilities, and the poor cat, too, is hanging on in a zombic combination of life and death.

   2010 November 9, Martin Bojowald, Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe, Knopf, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC QB981.B684 2010

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   For a time I wasn't sure of their purpose—neither, it seemed, were they—and I dreaded the possible need for another zombic performance.

   1991, C. S. Friedman, The Madness Season, New York: Daw, →ISBN

   […]there has been a gradual process of distillation, leaving just about all the reactionaries, for all their disagreements among themselves, united in the conviction that there is a real difference between a conscious person and a perfect zombie–let's call that intuition the Zombic Hunch–leading them to the thesis of Zombism: that the fundamental flaw in any mechanistic theory of consciousness is that it cannot account for this important difference.

   1999 November 28, Daniel Dennett, “The Zombic Hunch: Extinction of an Intuition?”, in Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, Cambridge, London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published 2005, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, LCC B945.D393S94 2005, page 14

2. Resembling a zombie.

   As fortune and custom's use would have it, few were the witnesses to my zombic march, and none to see this gaunt-eyed ghost slip inside his Pilot's cabin, though not through any worldly care of mine.

   1984, Norman Spinrad, The Void Captain's Tale, page 111

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   She explained to me instantly that it was normal for children to develop intense attachments to pets, even “zombic” ones that did not reciprocate affection, and that a pair of Japanese psychologists, Hatano and Inagaki, had done studies of how children develop intuitive theories of biology by having pets.

   2007 November 6, Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York, Random House, →ISBN

   I've always thought it more sensible than the zombic passivity we associate with Caucasian moviegoing—not unlike the difference between a staid Presbyterian church service and a rip-roaring Baptist get-down.

   2008 May 1, Gary Buslik, A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace It's Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen, Palo Alto: Travelers' Tales, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC F2171.3.B87 2008, page 2