- 1精靈、守護靈（希臘神話中半神半人的靈體；刻意用這個拼法以區別於基督教的「惡魔」demon）
A daemon, in ancient Greek belief and stories, is a spirit that sits between gods and human beings — not fully divine, not human. Some were thought of as guardian spirits, a kind of inner voice or personal guide; said a daemon warned him when he was about to do something wrong. Others were lesser powers who carried messages or handed out luck, good or bad. The spelling matters here. English keeps the old spelling 'daemon' precisely to hold on to this in-between, morally neutral meaning, because the ordinary spelling 'demon' has been narrowed by Christian usage to mean an evil spirit. So writers use 'daemon' when they want the Greek sense — Philip Pullman's novels made this famous by giving each person a daemon, an animal companion who is really part of their own soul. Separately, in computing a 'daemon' is a background program that runs quietly without a user watching it, named as a joke on Maxwell's demon; that sense is unrelated to the Greek one.
組成A borrowing of Latin daemōn, meaning a tutelary (guardian) deity, from Ancient Greek δαίμων (daímōn), 'dispenser, tutelary deity'. The Greek word carries the idea of one who deals out or apportions — a power that hands you your share of fortune.
同家族的字
- demonThe same word, in its ordinary English spelling and its narrowed Christian sense of an evil spirit.
- demonicThe adjective from the same Greek daimōn.
- pandemoniumCoined by Milton from Greek pan- 'all' + daimōn — 'the place of all demons', now meaning wild noisy chaos.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
daemonnoun詞源 1/ˈdiː.mən/
- 1
human-sciencesmysticismmythologyA minor deity or divinity.
- 2018, Carolyn Graves-Brown, Daemons and Spirits in Ancient Egypt, University of Wales Press, page 46, On some apotropaic wands the hippopotamus daemon bites or devours a person.⁸⁸ On a well-known New Kingdom papyrus, Taweret, who is named, is listed amongst evil daemons.
- 2
A muse, a personified source of inspiration, especially one that also causes anguish.
- That is why those of exceptionally "daemonic temperament", those who cannot early and thoroughly subdue the daemon within them, are racked by disquietude. Ever and again the daemon snatches the helm from their control and steers them (helpless as straws in the blast) into the heart of the storm, perchance to shatter them on the rocks of destiny.
- 2015, Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows, Penguin Random House (Random House), eBook edition, unnumbered page, Coleridge, deep in daemons, looked to them for his poetic power: They gave him Kubla Khan, Christabel, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He welcomed his daemon or genius and yet feared it.
- 3
An idea depicted as an entity.
daemonnoun詞源 2/ˈdiːmən/
- 1
computingengineeringmathematicsA process (a running program) that does not have a controlling terminal.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。