Demonism

noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Belief in, or worship of demons or devils. uncountable

    "1699, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Of Virtue, and the Belief of a Deity, in An Inquiry Concerning Virtue in Two Discourses, London: A. Bell et al., p. 10, […] if he believes more of the prevalency of an ill designing Principle than of a good one, he is then more a Daemonist than he is a Theist, and may be called a Daemonist from the side to which the balance most inclines. ¶ All these sorts both of Daemonism, Polytheism, Atheism, and Theism, may be mixed […]"

  2. 2
    a belief in and reverence for devils (especially Satan) wordnet
  3. 3
    The quality of being demonic. figuratively, often, uncountable

    "1915, Henry James, letter to Evan Charteris dated 22 January, 1915 in Percy Lubbock (ed.), The Letters of Henry James, London: Macmillan, Volume 2, p. 453, What a pitiful horror indeed must that Ypres desolation and desecration be—a baseness of demonism."

  4. 4
    An act or event attributed to demons or devils; an evil act. countable

    "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick."

Etymology

From demon + -ism.

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