zombie box

noun

A television.

Meanings

nounzombie box (plural zombie boxes)

plural zombie boxes

  1. derogatoryslanguncommonbroadcastingA television.

    Nichelle was wary as she set purse and a couple of small shopping bags on the table. "Great. Thanks?" He didn't say anything else, just kept watching the zombie box.

    2014, Chris Marie Green, Another One Bites the Dust, page 202
    2 more examples

    taking a form more frequently thought of as anathematical to poetry (Iain Chrichton Smith, for example, lambasted the TV as a deadening zombie box in "At the TV") and seeing in it parallels and possibilities.

    2002, Galloway Kyle, Harold Monro, Stephen Phillips (editors), Poetry Review, Volume 92, page 60

    More contemporary Russian fears are centered on the ability of mass media to essentially colonize human consciousness, turning the individual into a function of the "zombie-box" (or TV), as is the case in Viktor Pelevin's Generation П.

    2020, Keith A. Livers, Conspiracy Culture, Post-Soviet Paranoia and the Russian Imagination, page 23

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

  1. Russianзомбоящик
  2. Englishzombie box

A possible calque of Russian зомбоящик (zombojaščik).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

zombie box. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/zombie%20box

MLA

“zombie box.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/zombie%20box. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “zombie box,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/zombie%20box.

Source: zombie box on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.