demotic

[dih-mot-ik]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR demotic ON THESAURUS.COM

adjective

of or relating to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language; vernacular: a poet with a keen ear for demotic rhythms.

of or relating to the common people; popular.

of, relating to, or noting the simplified form of hieratic writing used in ancient Egypt between 700 b.c. and a.d. 500.

noun

demotic script.

(initial capital letter) Also called Romaic. the Modern Greek vernacular (distinguished from Katharevusa).

Origin of demotic

1815–25; < Greek dēmotikós popular, plebeian, equivalent to dēmót(ēs) a plebeian (derivative of dêmos; see demo-) + -ikos -ic

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for demotic

conversational, vernacular, chatty, common, dialectal, everyday, idiomatic, popular, street, jive

Examples from the Web for demotic

Contemporary Examples of demotic

Anything but demotic is Amar Bhide's A Call For Judgment, subtitled "Sensible Finance For A Dynamic Economy."
The Daily Beast's Favorite Books of 2010
The Daily Beast
December 18, 2010
The demotic self-deprecation barely masks a vast ambition, which is a kind of deception in itself, or an artifice.
Palin Paranoia Decoded
Tunku Varadarajan
November 23, 2010
An impatient lower court forced her to change it to the demotic “Gregorio,” noting that Venerdi was “a ridiculous name.”
The Week in Rage
Adam Hanft
October 24, 2008

Historical Examples of demotic

The Hieratic, like the Demotic, is always written from right to left.
The New York Obelisk
Charles E. Moldenke
In Demotic, if I understand aright, the vowels are not written and the consonants often do not mean what they seem to mean.
The Story of Nefrekepta
Gilbert Murray
It is a stel of black basalt, bearing an inscription in Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek.
The New York Obelisk
Charles E. Moldenke
What I expected was a reply in kind, an hieratic acceptance or a demotic refusal; either one would be good practice for Monny.
It Happened in Egypt
C. N. Williamson
No one any longer wrote in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the hieroglyphic writing was forgotten.
History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12)
S. Rappoport

British Dictionary definitions for demotic

demotic

adjective

of or relating to the common people; popular

of or relating to a simplified form of hieroglyphics used in ancient Egypt by the ordinary literate class outside the priesthoodCompare hieratic

noun

the demotic script of ancient Egypt

Derived Formsdemotist, noun

Word Origin for demotic

C19: from Greek dēmotikos of the people, from dēmotēs a man of the people, commoner; see demos

Demotic

noun

the spoken form of Modern Greek, now increasingly used in literatureCompare Katharevusa

adjective

denoting or relating to this

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for demotic

adj.

1822, from Greek demotikos "of or for the common people, in common use," from demos "common people," originally "district," from PIE *da-mo- "division," from root *da- "to divide" (see tide). In contrast to hieratic. Originally of the simpler of two forms of ancient Egyptian writing; broader sense is from 1831; used of Greek since 1927.