demon [ME] The Greek word daimōn is the root of demon. In ancient Greece a demon or daemon was a divine or supernatural being somewhere between gods and humans, or an attendant spirit or inspiring force, a sense picked up by Philip Pullman in his His Dark Materials books. These demons were not evil; these did not appear until the writing of the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc. See also devil.