Faith & RitualGreek → English
Demon
/ˈdiːmən/noun
An evil spirit, or a person of relentless energy at some task.
The Greek roots
δαίμων
daímōn
divine power, spirit
Literally: “the one who apportions”
Follow a root:δαίμων3 words
The story of the word
A δαίμων was originally a divine power of no fixed morality, often the one that allotted your share of fortune; the root is plausibly δαίομαι, to divide out. Socrates spoke of his daimonion, an inner voice that warned him off actions, and εὐδαιμονία, the standard Greek word for happiness, means having a good spirit assigned to you. Christian Greek then flattened all of it into evil spirits, and Milton assembled the whole crowd in 1667 in a hall he called Pandemonium.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
pandemoniumeudaimoniademonic
In a sentence
He works like a demon for three weeks, then sleeps for two days.