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.
demotic script.
Also called Romaic. (initial capital letter) the Modern Greek vernacular (distinguished from Katharevusa).
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 priesthood Compare hieratic
1815–25; < Greek dēmotikós popular, plebeian, equivalent to dēmót ( ēs ) a plebeian (derivative of dêmos; see demo-) + -ikos -ic
A demotic saying or expression is casual, colloquial, and used by the masses. Some forms of the Greek and Egyptian languages are also called demotic, which will be relevant to you when you get your PhD in Classics. Demotic comes from the Greek word demotikos, meaning "of or for the common people" or "in common use." Members of the aristocracy don’t typically use demotic idioms, but it is often the elite who will point out that something is demotic. Of course, in a classless society, everything ought to be demotic, therefore making it obsolete to designate sayings as demotic. So far, however, demotic is still a relevant term.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
With a voice that is relatively light and raspy and a delivery both nimble and demotic, Mr. Dale matches his energy to the text in a way that makes for effortless listening.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
Beside the "beautifully and accurately carved" sphinx, archaeologists also found a Roman-era stone slab with demotic and hieroglyphic inscriptions.
From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2023
A series of interconnected short narratives about a group of friends, “Trainspotting” is inventive, scurrilous, gloriously demotic and entirely itself.
From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 2022
He would waffle in demotic English and then answer a charge with a quotation from Seneca.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 8, 2022
Already in the demotic writing we find a few of these foreign intruders naturalized; but in the Coptic, as used for ecclesiastical purposes, they occur in the greatest profusion.
From A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II. by Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose
Another inscription on the vessel is written in Demotic script, a simplified form of ancient Egyptian writing.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 18, 2025
The use of Egyptian hieroglyphs, for example, continued for centuries until it was ultimately replaced by Meroitic, an alpha-syllabic script derived from the Egyptian Demotic script.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
Bearing inscriptions of the same text in Hieroglyphs, Demotic and Ancient Greek, it was used by Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher Hieroglyphs from 1822, opening up understanding of ancient Egyptian language and culture.
From Reuters ● Oct. 5, 2022
And the three bands of text — classical Greek, hieroglyphs and an Egyptian shorthand called Demotic — were intended to proclaim the monarch’s achievements in multiple tongues to the peoples of the empire.
From New York Times ● Oct. 19, 2021
Demotic and Hieratic Ordinals This theory of the very early introduction of the numerals into Europe fails in several points.
From The Hindu-Arabic Numerals by Karpinski, Louis Charles
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
