If I call somebody a zombie, I usually mean they seem pretty out of it, half asleep or half dead. The original zombie was a python god worshipped in West Africa. This worship was carried to the West Indies with the slave trade and incorporated into voodoo practices in that region. In these voodoo ceremonies a sorcerer was said to bring dead bodies back to life. These corpses were thought to shuffle along half dead and half alive and called zombies. In the late 19^th century, the stories of the zombies became quite popular in North American and European folklore. Already by 1920 the term zombie meant not just one of these undead, but also someone who was slow-witted.