daimon

plural daimons · plural daimones

1. Synonym of demon, particularly as

   Love, as we know it in the book, is a daimon which possesses and undoes each of its victims.

   1983 August 13, John Rosario, “Illustrious Obscurity”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 5, page 16

   Synonyms: demon, particularly as

   1. Greekhuman sciencesA tutelary deity or spirit that watches over a person or place.

      Marcus Aurelius is persuaded that God gives every man a special daimon as his guide – a belief which reappears in the Christian guardian angel.

      1945, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy: And its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →OCLC, book I, chapter 27

      3 more examples

      All at once, my daimōn—that other Me over whom I button my waistcoat when I button it over my own person—put it into my head to look up the story of Madame Saqui.

      1890 January, Oliver Wendell Holmes [Sr.], “Over the Teacups”, in The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume LXV, number CCCLXXXVII, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, →OCLC, page 121

      The object which first appears is adopted as the personal mystery, guardian spirit, or tutelary daimon of the entranced, and is never mentioned by him without first making a sacrifice.

      1891, W[alter] J[ames] Hoffman, The Mide’wiwin or “Grand Medicine Society” of the Ojibwa, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 163

      He will release his pent-up rage and fear no evil, for his genius is with him, and his daimon bids him violate all the taboos of the literary marketplace.

      1960, Charles I. Glicksberg, “Norman Mailer: The Angry Young Novelist in America”, in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, volume 1, number 1, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, →OCLC