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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

dae·mon

Audio Help [dee-muh

n] Pronunciation Key

–noun

Classical Mythology.

a god.

b.	a subordinate deity, as the genius of a place or a person's attendant spirit.

a demon.

Also, daimon.

[Origin: < L daemōn a spirit, an evil spirit < Gk daímōn a deity, fate, fortune; cf. daíesthai to distribute

]

—Related forms

dae·mon·ic

Audio Help [di-mon-ik] Pronunciation Key, dae·mon·is·tic

Audio Help [dee-muh-nis-tik] Pronunciation Key, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
daemon

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

dae·mon Audio Help (dē'mən) Pronunciation Key
n.

Chiefly British Variant of demon.
Variant of daimon.
Computer Science A program or process that sits idly in the background until it is invoked to perform its task.

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

dai·mon Audio Help (dī'mōn') Pronunciation Key
n. Greek Mythology

An inferior deity, such as a deified hero.
An attendant spirit; a genius.

[Greek daimōn; see dā- in Indo-European roots.]

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WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

daemon
noun
1.	an evil supernatural being [syn: devil]
2.	a person who is part mortal and part god

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing - Cite This Source - Share This

daemon operating system
/day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ (From the mythological meaning, later rationalised as the acronym "Disk And Execution MONitor") A program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon).
For example, under ITS writing a file on the LPT spooler's directory would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then print the file. The advantage is that programs wanting files printed need neither compete for access to, nor understand any idiosyncrasies of, the LPT. They simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals.
Unix systems run many daemons, chiefly to handle requests for services from other hosts on a network. Most of these are now started as required by a single real daemon, inetd, rather than running continuously. Examples are cron (local timed command execution), rshd (remote command execution), rlogind and telnetd (remote login), ftpd, nfsd (file transfer), lpd (printing).
Daemon and demon are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations (see demon). The term "daemon" was introduced to computing by CTSS people (who pronounced it /dee'mon/) and used it to refer to what ITS called a dragon.
[The Jargon File]
(1995-05-11)