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undead

undead

40 7.0
No longer alive but coming back to life like vampires or zombies in stories
  • adjective
  • /ʌnˈdɛd/
  • Literature
translation icon : no muerto
  • During Halloween, people love to wear costumes that depict undead beings like zombies and vampires.

Did you know this had like a giant like undead dragon thing on it?

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Examples

  • Being undead is the bomb!

  • The hikers were terrified when they stumbled upon a hidden cemetery filled with undead monsters.

  • How rude the undead specimens can be.

  • If Call of Duty: World at War taught us anything, it's that undead Nazis are terrifying.

    Blog text (14)
  • A never-ending army of undead.

  • Kate, do you swear to God that when I become one of the undead , you'll kill me?

  • His plan was to raise an army of the undead and wage war on humanity by channeling fear into a weapon.

  • Education finally gets serious about the undead apocalypse with this Zombie Scholarship.

    Blog text (7)
  • In marked contrast to the older vampire in the prologue, Wally is freshly undead.

    Fiction book (1992)
  • In the movie, the hero had to defend his town from an army of undead creatures rising from the grave.

Synonyms

living dead
vsundead
  • Literature
5 8.6

A dead body that comes back to life like a zombie

is broader meaning beings no longer alive but not truly dead

How Alive

thriving
6 3.8
alive
1.0
dying
1 2.4
undead
  • Literature
40 7.0
dead
1.0
inanimate
11 5.3

Surface Forms

undead positive

Morphology

undead = dead (transparent) = un + dead

The adjective is a regular negation formed with un- + dead, so learners who know 'dead' and 'un-' can infer the meaning.

Etymology

Undead comes from the common prefix un- meaning 'not' and the word dead, so it literally says 'not dead'. In stories, this adjective describes someone who is no longer alive in the normal way but still moves or acts, which is why we call vampires or zombies 'undead'.