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In a recent post, we explored the Greek root “pan-” that begins the word “pandemic.”  Now let’s look at the second root in that word, also from ancient Greek: “demos,” meaning “ordinary citizens, common people.”

“Demos” appears as “dem” or “demo” in key English words like “democracy,” whose suffix “-cracy” is from Greek “kratos, -kratia,” meaning “rule, strength, power, authority.”  Several important words end in “-cracy” (meaning “power structure, government by”) and the related “-crat” (“person holding that power or participating in that system”).

As you can see, “democracy” means “people power.”  President Abraham Lincoln aptly expressed it as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in an eloquent speech he made in 1863, known as the Gettysburg Address.

Look up the roots of the “-cracy”/“-crat” words below — this will reinforce your comprehension & long-term memory of them:

aristocracy / aristocrat

autocracy / autocrat

bureaucracy / bureaucrat

meritocracy / (“-crat” form is not common … yet!)

plutocracy / plutocrat

technocracy / technocrat

Another word featuring “dem/demo” is “demography,” whose suffix comes from Greek “-graphia,” meaning “description of.”  So “demography” means “description of the people [in a particular place].”  In English, we often use the form “demographics,” which are statistics of measurable aspects of a population, like age, marital status, income & education levels.

By the way, “-graphia” comes from the Greek verb “grapho,” meaning “write, draw, scratch.”  Inherent in writing/drawing is the idea of recording information, so the English suffixes “-graph,” “-graphy” & “-graphic” express some aspect of recording or describing.  Think about that when you see words like “photograph” (“photo” is from a Greek noun meaning “light”) and “geography” (“geo” refers to “world, land”; also from ancient Greek).

“Graph” and “graphic” are not only suffixes; they stand alone as individual words in English, as you probably know from developing visual aids for presentations at work or in school!

Now take “dem” and add the Greek “agogos,” meaning “leader,” and you get “demagogue.”  A leader of the people? Yes … but in this case, “a leader of the mob”: a political manipulator who exploits people’s “prejudices, wishes, ignorance, and passions,” according to Etymonline (see source note below).

The word “demon,” meaning “supernatural spirit, evil spirit,” also comes from ancient Greek, but from a different root (“daimon,” not “demos”).  English author John Milton combined “demon” with the prefix “pan-” (discussed in our recent post) to create the word “pandemonium.”  Interestingly, the pre-Greek heritage of “daimon” & “demos” is closely related.

Another word unrelated to “demos” is “demonstrate” — it’s from Latin, not Greek, and it’s a cousin of the word “monster”!  If you’re interested, research the etymologies of “demon,” “pandemonium” & “demonstrate” on your own.

SOURCES for information included in this post: Etymonline, the Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com: “dēmotic,” “-cracy,” “-graphy,” “demagogue,” “pandemonium,” “photo-,” “geo,” “demonstrate” & related entries); English Wiktionary (en.wiktionary.org: “dēmos,” “demon,” “-graphy” & related entries); English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org: “Gettysburg Address” & related entries).

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A version of this article appeared as a post on NYU’s English Language Institute blog on July 15, 2021.