daemon

plural daemons · plural daemones

1. human sciencesA 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.

   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.

   1 more example

   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.

   2012, Stefan Zweig, translated by Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, The Struggle with the Daemon: Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche, Pushkin Press, unnumbered page

3. An idea depicted as an entity.
4. archaicArchaic spelling of demon.

plural daemons · alternative dæmon · alternative daimon · alternative demon

1. UnixcomputingA process (a running program) that does not have a controlling terminal.