From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Daemon \D[ae]"mon\, n., Daemonic \D[ae]*mon"ic\, a.
See {Demon}, {Demonic}.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Demon \De"mon\, n. [F. d['e]mon, L. daemon a spirit, an evil
spirit, fr. Gr. dai`mwn a divinity; of uncertain origin.]
1. (Gr. Antiq.) A spirit, or immaterial being, holding a
middle place between men and deities in pagan mythology.
[1913 Webster]
The demon kind is of an intermediate nature between
the divine and the human. --Sydenham.
[1913 Webster]
2. One's genius; a tutelary spirit or internal voice; as, the
demon of Socrates. [Often written {d[ae]mon}.]
[1913 Webster]
3. An evil spirit; a devil.
[1913 Webster]
That same demon that hath gulled thee thus. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
daemon
n 1: an evil supernatural being [syn: {devil}, {fiend}, {demon},
{daemon}, {daimon}]
2: a person who is part mortal and part god [syn: {daemon},
{demigod}]
From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
daemon
/day'mn/, /dee?mn/, n.
[from Maxwell's Demon, later incorrectly retronymed as ?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 (in this example)
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.
Daemon and {demon} are often used interchangeably, but seem to have
distinct connotations. 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 prototype was a program called DAEMON that
automatically made tape backups of the file system. Although the meaning
and the pronunciation have drifted, we think this glossary reflects current
(2003) usage.
From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2013) [vera]:
DAEMON
Disk And Execution MONitor (Unix)
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