demotic
/dɪˈmɒt.ɪk/US/dɪˈmɑ.tɪk/
demotic adjective: of or for the common people.
Adjective
demotic (not comparable)
- Of or for the common people.
- demotic writing style
- Anything grandiose or historically based tends to sound flat and banal when it reaches English, partly because translators get stuck between contradictory imperatives: juggling fidelity to the original sense with what is vocally viable, they tend to resort to a genteel fustian which lacks either...2014 March 1, Rupert Christiansen, “English translations rarely sing”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), page R19
- Synonyms:
- colloquial, informal, popular, vernacular
- Antonyms:
- formal
- Of, relating to, or written in the ancient Egyptian script that developed from Lower Egyptian hieratic writing starting from around 650 BCE and was chiefly used to write the Demotic phase of the Egyptian language, with simplified and cursive characters that no longer corresponded directly to their hieroglyphic precursors.
- Synonyms:
- enchorial
- Of, relating to, or written in the form of modern vernacular Greek.
- demotic Greek
Noun
demotic (countable and uncountable, plural demotics)
- Language as spoken or written by the common people.
- Near-synonym: vernacular
- Note the intrusion into British demotic (“me and Cheryl were having”) of the valley-girl quotative be, like.2010, John C. Wells, accents map
- Synonyms:
- vernacular
Proper noun capitalized: Demotic
Demotic
- The demotic Egyptian script, used from c. 650 BCE to 452 CE.
- Regarding the ranges of these palaeographic areas, the terms mentioned might again be misleading to a nonadept, who, for example, has to know that the Delta is mostly uncharted territory in regard to Demotic palaeography (due to the lack of sources from this area).2020, Vanessa Davies, Dimitri Laboury, The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography, page 611
- The demotic Egyptian language, spoken from c. 650 BCE to 400 BCE.
demotic meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Arabic
demotic in Tamil
- வழக்குநடையில் அமைந்த
demotic in Urdu
- عامیانہ, عوامی, ہردل عزیز
demotic in Malayalam
- vernacular, popular, colloquial
- സാധാരണജനങ്ങളുടെ ഭാഷയായ, വാമൊഴിപരമായ, ജനസാമാന്യത്തിന്റെ ഭാഷയായ, നാട്ടുഭാഷയെ സംബന്ധിച്ച, ദേശ്യഭാഷയായ, വാമൊഴി സംബന്ധിച്ച
demotic in Arabic
- of or for the common people
- شَعْبِيّ šaʕbiyy, دَارِج dārij
Synonyms of demotic
Antonyms
Forms of demotic
| plural | demotics |
|---|
Origin of demotic
First attested in 1822, from Ancient Greek δημοτικός (dēmotikós, “common”), from δημότης (dēmótēs, “commoner”), from δῆμος (dêmos, “the common people”).
Words formed from demotic
Questions about demotic
- What does demotic mean?
- Demotic means of or for the common people.
- What is demotic in Tamil?
- Demotic in Tamil is வழக்குநடையில் அமைந்த. See Demotic meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is demotic?
- Demotic can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce demotic?
- Demotic is pronounced /dɪˈmɒt.ɪk/ (UK).
Words near demotic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: demotic (page history and authors); Demotic (page history and authors); demotic (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); demotic (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); demotic (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-demotic.wav.
Cite this entry: “demotic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/demotic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.