demoniac

• daemoniac, dæmoniac

From Middle English demoniak et al., from Old French demoniaque, from Late Latin daemoniacus.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈməʊnɪak/, /diməˈnaɪæk/

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demoniac (comparative more demoniac, superlative most demoniac)

1. Possessed or controlled by a demon.
2. Of or pertaining to demons; demonic.
   • 1827, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Poems, 1827: The Sweetness of Life, page 24:

     How dark may be the hiding of God's face,
     Or what demoniac forms may seize the helm
     Of reason...

   • 1928 February, H P Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:

     Animal fury and orgiastic licence here whipped themselves to demoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell.

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber & Faber, published 2005, page 216:

     There was movement everywhere, screaming, demoniac activity; the old man was coming across the tumbling logs.

demoniac (plural demoniacs)

1. Someone who is possessed by a demon.
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 53:

     The exorcism was dropped from the second Edwardian Prayer Book, because of its implication that unbaptised infants were demoniacs […].

• “demoniac”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• comedian, daemonic, dæmonic, midocean

From Latin daemoniacus.^[1] Attested from the 13th century.^[2]

demoniac m (feminine singular demoniaca, masculine plural demoniacs, feminine plural demoniacas) (Gascony, Languedoc)

1. demoniac, demonic

• demòni

• Diccionari General de la Lenga Occitana, L’Academia occitana – Consistòri del Gai Saber, 2008-2024, page 184.
• Pèir Morà, "Diccionari tot en gascon", 2020, Éditions des Régionalismes, Cressé, →ISBN, p. 93

Borrowed from French démoniaque.

demoniac m or n (feminine singular demoniacă, masculine plural demoniaci, feminine and neuter plural demoniace)

1. demonic