daemon
A minor deity or divinity.
Noun human sciences, mysticism
- A minor deity or divinity.
- 2018, Carolyn Graves-Brown, Daemons and Spirits in Ancient Egypt, University of Wales Press, page 46, On some apotropaic wands the hippopotamus daemon bites or devours a person.⁸⁸ On a well-known New Kingdom papyrus,...
- A muse, a personified source of inspiration, especially one that also causes anguish.
- That is why those of exceptionally "daemonic temperament", those who cannot early and thoroughly subdue the daemon within them, are racked by disquietude. Ever and again the daemon snatches the helm from their control...
- 2015, Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows, Penguin Random House (Random House), eBook edition, unnumbered page, Coleridge, deep in daemons, looked to them for his poetic power: They gave him Kubla Khan, Christabel, and The...
- An idea depicted as an entity.
- Archaic spelling of demon.
Origin
A borrowing of Latin daemōn (“tutelary deity”), from Ancient Greek δαίμων (daímōn, “dispenser, tutelary deity”).
Forms
Related
agathodaemon cacodaemon cacodemon cacodaemonic cacodemonic cacodaemoniacal daemonic daimon eudaemon genius muse tutelary deity
Derived
Noun computing, engineering
- A process (a running program) that does not have a controlling terminal.
Origin
A reference to Maxwell's demon. The putative derivation from "disk and execution monitor" is generally considered a backronym.