demotic
[dih-mot-ik]
- 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.
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- demotic script.
- (initial capital letter) Also called Romaic. the Modern Greek vernacular (distinguished from Katharevusa).
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Origin of demotic
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for demotic
Contemporary Examples
Anything but demotic is Amar Bhide's A Call For Judgment, subtitled "Sensible Finance For A Dynamic Economy."
The demotic self-deprecation barely masks a vast ambition, which is a kind of deception in itself, or an artifice.
An impatient lower court forced her to change it to the demotic “Gregorio,” noting that Venerdi was “a ridiculous name.”
Historical Examples
The Hieratic, like the Demotic, is always written from right to left.
The New York ObeliskCharles 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 NefrekeptaGilbert Murray
It is a stel of black basalt, bearing an inscription in Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek.
The New York ObeliskCharles 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 EgyptC. N. Williamson
No one any longer wrote in the hieroglyphic, hieratic, or demotic scripts; in a word, the hieroglyphic writing was forgotten.
demotic
- 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
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- the demotic script of ancient Egypt
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Word Origin
C19: from Greek dēmotikos of the people, from dēmotēs a man of the people, commoner; see demos
Demotic
- the spoken form of Modern Greek, now increasingly used in literatureCompare Katharevusa
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- denoting or relating to this
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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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.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper