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Audio Help [dee-muhn] Pronunciation Key | 1. | an evil spirit; devil or fiend. |
| 2. | an evil passion or influence. |
| 3. | a person considered extremely wicked, evil, or cruel. |
| 4. | a person with great energy, drive, etc.: He's a demon for work. |
| 5. | a person, esp. a child, who is very mischievous: His younger son is a real little demon. |
| 6. | daemon. |
| 7. | Australian Slang. a policeman, esp. a detective. |
| 8. | of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or noting a demon. |
| 9. | possessed or controlled by a demon. |
] | Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. |
Demon
To learn more about Demon visit Britannica.com
| © 2008 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
| dai·mon
Audio Help (dī'mōn') Pronunciation Key
n. Greek Mythology
[Greek daimōn; see dā- in Indo-European roots.] |
| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| de·mon
Audio Help (dē'mən) Pronunciation Key
n.
[Middle English, from Late Latin daemōn, from Latin, spirit, from Greek daimōn, divine power; see dā- in Indo-European roots.] |
| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
demon
| Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper |
| demon | |
noun | |
| 1. | an evil supernatural being [syn: devil] |
| 2. | a cruel wicked and inhuman person [syn: monster] |
| 3. | someone extremely diligent or skillful; "he worked like a demon to finish the job on time"; "she's a demon at math" |
| WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University. |
demon [ˈdiːmən] noun
Example: demons from Hell
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| Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary, © 2000-2006 K Dictionaries Ltd. |
demon
1.
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.
3. A program generator for differential equation problems.
[N.W. Bennett, Australian AEC Research Establishment, AAEC/E142, Aug 1965].
[The Jargon File]
(1998-09-04)
| The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe |
demon
n.1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See daemon. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system.
2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to daemon -- especially in the Unix world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
Demons in sense 1 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.
| Jargon File 4.2.0 |
Demon
D[ae]"mon\, n., Daemonic \D[ae]*mon"ic\, a. See Demon, Demonic.| Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. |
Demon
See DAEMON.
| Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary |
DEMON
DEMON: in Acronym Finder
| Acronym Finder, © 1988-2007 Mountain Data Systems |
demon
demon: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary
| On-line Medical Dictionary, © 1997-98 Academic Medical Publishing & CancerWEB |
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