demon definition | Dictionary.com

de⋅mon

[dee-muh

–noun

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.

daemon.

7.	Australian Slang. a policeman, esp. a detective.

–adjective

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

9.	possessed or controlled by a demon.

Origin:
1350–1400; ME < L daemonium < Gk daimónion, thing of divine nature (in Jewish and Christian writers, evil spirit), neut. of daimónios, deriv. of daímōn; (def. 6) < L; see daemon

demon-

var. of demono- before a vowel: demonism.

demono-

a combining form representing demon in compound words: demonology.

Also, especially before a vowel, demon-.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To demon

dai·mon (dī'mōn')

n. Greek Mythology

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

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

de·mon (dē'mən)

An evil supernatural being; a devil.
A persistently tormenting person, force, or passion: the demon of drug addiction.
One who is extremely zealous, skillful, or diligent: worked away like a demon; a real demon at math.
Variant of daimon.

[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 © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Demon

De"mon\, n. [F. d['e]mon, L. daemon a spirit, an evil spirit, fr. Gr. ? a divinity; of uncertain origin.]

1. (Gr. Antiq.) A spirit, or immaterial being, holding a middle place between men and deities in pagan mythology.

The demon kind is of an intermediate nature between the divine and the human. --Sydenham.

2. One's genius; a tutelary spirit or internal voice; as, the demon of Socrates. [Often written d[ae]mon.]

3. An evil spirit; a devil.

That same demon that hath gulled thee thus. --Shak.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : demon

Spanish: demonio,

German: der Dämon,

Japanese: 悪魔

More Translations »

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
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demon

1387, 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 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 (1387) was a daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle." His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Beta Persei (in Ar. Algol "the Demon") so called because it visibly varies in brightness every three days. Fem. form demoness first attested 1638. Demonic is from 1662; demonize is from 1821.

demon
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].
[The Jargon File]
(1998-09-04)

Demon

See DAEMON.

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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