GalacticCactus Forum

Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: pooka on August 02, 2007, 06:29:41 AM

Title: I think "daemon" is a dumb word.
Post by: pooka on August 02, 2007, 06:29:41 AM

There's probably a way to put a digraph in my title, but I'll assume you know what I mean.  Do people really say it as a digraph (so the first syllable woud rhyme with "cat")?  It seems to be a somewhat common fixture of fantastical entertainment, particularly Warhammer 40K and His Dark Materials.

Oh, I see it's also part of Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft.  Well.

Quote

Yugoloths were originally called daemons in the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. However, along with demons and devils, their names were changed in the second edition of Dungeons and Dragons to avoid conflict with fundamentalist Christians who viewed the game as satanic.

I don't know if I should chuckle at that.  

Title: I think "daemon" is a dumb word.
Post by: Porter on August 02, 2007, 07:07:53 AM

Daemon is a also a technial term for a type of process in UNIX operating systems.

AFAIK, it's pronounced just like "demon".

Title: I think "daemon" is a dumb word.
Post by: pooka on August 02, 2007, 07:35:17 AM

Does it come from the D&D usage?

Title: I think "daemon" is a dumb word.
Post by: Porter on August 02, 2007, 07:49:27 AM

I have no idea.

Title: I think "daemon" is a dumb word.
Post by: Jonathon on August 02, 2007, 08:02:49 AM

Quote

There's probably a way to put a digraph in my title, but I'll assume you know what I mean.  Do people really say it as a digraph (so the first syllable woud rhyme with "cat")?

:huh:

In Latin, the digraph æ was pronounced as a diphthong, /ai/. In Vulgar Latin the diphthong smoothed to /?:/, which became /i:/ after the Great Vowel Shift in English. The Germanic letter (not digraph) æ was pronounced like the vowel in cat. A digraph is just a way to write two letters as one, so it doesn't really make sense to say that people say it as a digraph.

Daemon is just a variant spelling of demon, just as haemophiliac is a variant of hemophiliac. I'm guessing it comes from Britain, because they like to hang on to those Latin ae and oe spellings where Americans simplify them to e.