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''daemon'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260218114101-00-⌔

daemon - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

daemon (plural daemons or daemones)

  • (mythology) A minor deity or divinity.
    • ✤ On some apotropaic wands the hippopotamus daemon bites or devours a person. On a well-known New Kingdom papyrus, Taweret, who is named, is listed amongst evil daemons.1
  • 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 and steers them (helpless as straws in the blast) into the heart of the storm, perchance to shatter them on the rocks of destiny.2
    • ✤ Coleridge, deep in daemons, looked to them for his poetic power: They gave him Kubla Khan, Christabel, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He welcomed his daemon or genius and yet feared it.3
  • An idea depicted as an entity.
  • Archaic spelling of demon.

Noun

daemon (plural daemons)

  • (computing, Unix) A process (a running program) that does not have a controlling terminal.

Etymology 1

A borrowing of Latin daemōn (“tutelary deity”), from Ancient Greek δαίμων (daímōn, “dispenser, tutelary deity”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA: /ˈdiː.mən/
  • Rhymes: -iːmən
  • Hyphenation: dae‧mon

Etymology 2

A reference to Maxwell’s demon. The putative derivation from ”* disk* a nd * execution* * monitor*” is generally considered a backronym.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈdiːmən/, /ˈdeɪmən/
  • Rhymes: -iːmən, -eɪmən
  • Hyphenation: dae‧mon

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 2018, Carolyn Graves-Brown, * Daemons and Spirits in Ancient Egypt*, University of Wales Press, page 46, ↩

  2. 2012, Stefan Zweig, translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche, Pushkin Press, unnumbered page: ↩

  3. 2015, Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows, Penguin Random House (Random House), eBook edition, unnumbered page, ↩

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Secondary

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