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DEMON

[dee-muhn]

Example Sentences Origin

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noun

an evil spirit; devil or fiend.

an evil passion or influence.

a person considered extremely wicked, evil, or cruel.

a person with great energy, drive, etc.: He's a demon for work.

a person, especially a child, who is very mischievous: His younger son is a real little demon.

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daemon.

Australian Slang. a policeman, especially a detective.

COLLAPSE

adjective

of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or noting a demon.

possessed or controlled by a demon.

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Demon is always a great word to know.

So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:

the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

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Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English < Latin daemonium < Greek daimónion, thing of divine nature (in Jewish and Christian writers, evil spirit), neuter of daimónios, derivative of daímōn; (def. 6) < Latin; see daemon

Example Sentences

Perhaps, but to judge by all the frenetic activity going on, the demon unleashed is more likely to be exhaustion.

One argument is that demon possession as a religious concept was good for business.

Its going to take a combination of all to overcome this demon.

EXPAND

Perhaps, but to judge by all the frenetic activity going on, the demon unleashed is more likely to be exhaustion.

One argument is that demon possession as a religious concept was good for business.

Its going to take a combination of all to overcome this demon.

Ryan tells us what happens when players conjure up a demon by accident.

Bennett a real-estate salesman with a foul temper and a thirst for the demon drink.

At a full stop-for the moment, the swift fox is a real speed demon.

Memes ensure the concept of god and demon are entrenched in human society.

Many have given up tobacco-company grants, and all have bowed to current sensitivities about the demon weed.

From dawn to dusk, sea to summit this speed demon is built for a lightweight fit that keeps your eyes feeling completely relaxed.

They don't fall off the wagon they're pushed by an inner demon.

God alone knows what his electricity is going to cost once the demon nuclear has been seen off the premises.

At noon a village performed a play about a good spirit overcoming a mud-covered demon.

And for all those murders, people claimed the killings were the work of a demon.

It's only the temptation of demon irony that draws it onto protest signs.

In an ocean full of whoppers, marlins are the ultimate swordsmen speed demon predator.

Kent's demon simpered, supplicated and looked deceptively feeble as his devilish mood prompted him.

Hydrogen infrastructure isn't the demon it appears to be at first glance.

Ninja demons, clown demons, bazooka demons: you've got a nice little demon variety pack going.

Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.

He sent hundreds of thousands of his demon soldiers to defeat her, but she killed them all and drank their blood.

Time has come now to soul search as to how this demon came in to being to trample the world peace and order.

To prevent the world from being destroyed, the demon has to be sealed and the only one who.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

variant of demono- before a vowel: demonism.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To DEMON

Collins

World English Dictionary

demon (ˈdiːmən)

—n
1.	an evil spirit or devil
2.	a person, habit, obsession, etc, thought of as evil, cruel, or persistently tormenting
3.	daemon, Also called: daimon an attendant or ministering spirit; genius: the demon of inspiration
4.	a. a person who is extremely skilful in, energetic at, or devoted to a given activity, esp a sport: a demon at cycling
	b. (as modifier): a demon cyclist
5.	a variant spelling of daemon
6.	informal, archaic (Austral), (NZ) a detective or policeman
7.	computing a part of a computer program, such as a help facility, that can run in the background behind the current task or application, and which will only begin to work when certain conditions are met or when it is specifically invoked

[C15: from Latin daemōn evil spirit, spirit, from Greek daimōn spirit, deity, fate; see daemon]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

demon

late 14c., from L. dæmon "spirit," from Gk. daimon (gen. daimonos) "lesser god, guiding spirit, tutelary deity," (sometimes including souls of the dead), used (with daimonion) in Christian Gk. translations and Vulgate for "god of the heathen" and "unclean spirit." Jewish authors earlier had employed

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the Gk. word in this sense, using it to render shedim "lords, idols" in the Septuagint, and Matt. viii.31 has daimones, translated as deofol in O.E., feend or deuil in M.E. The original mythological sense is sometimes written dæmon for purposes of distinction. The Demon of Socrates (late 14c.) was a daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle." His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. Fem. form demoness first attested 1630s. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol.

COLLAPSE

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

demon definition

1. (Often used equivalently to daemon, especially in the Unix world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic). A program or part of a program which is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur.
At MIT they use "demon" for part of a program and "daemon" for an operating system process.
Demons (parts of programs) are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was. This is similar to the triggers used in relational databases.
The use of this term may derive from "Maxwell's Demons" - minute beings which can reverse the normal flow of heat from a hot body to a cold body by only allowing fast moving molecules to go from the cold body to the hot one and slow molecules from hot to cold. The solution to this apparent thermodynamic paradox is that the demons would require an external supply of energy to do their work and it is only in the absence of such a supply that heat must necessarily flow from hot to cold.
Walt Bunch believes the term comes from the demons in Oliver Selfridge's paper "Pandemonium", MIT 1958, which was named after the capital of Hell in Milton's "Paradise Lost". Selfridge likened neural cells firing in response to input patterns to the chaos of millions of demons shrieking in Pandemonium.
2. Demon Internet Ltd.
3. A program generator for differential equation problems.
[N.W. Bennett, Australian AEC Research Establishment, AAEC/E142, Aug 1965].
[Jargon File]
(1998-09-04)

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