Daemon

Daemon – a process in an operating system that runs in the background.

It is falsely considered an acronym for Disk And Execution MONitor. According to the original team that introduced the concept, “the use of the word daemon was inspired by the Maxwell’s daemon of physics and thermodynamics (an imaginary agent which helped sort molecules of different speeds and worked tirelessly in the background)”. The earliest use appears to have been in the phrase “daemon of Socrates”, which meant his “guiding or indwelling spirit; his genius”, also a pre-Christian equivalent of the “Guardian Angel”, or, alternatively, a demigod (bearing only an etymological connection to the word “demon”). The term was embraced, and possibly popularized, by the Unix operating systems: various local (and later Internet) services were provided by daemons. This is exemplified by the BSD mascot, John Lasseter’s drawing of a friendly imp. Thus, a daemon is something that works magically without anyone being much aware of it.