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Community Comment

A Word A Day — demiurge

Good morning, Netizens...

 

October 24, 2012

Word of the Day


 

  • demiurge

  • audio pronunciation

  • \DEM-ee-erj\

  • DEFINITION

  •  

noun

: one that is an autonomous creative force or decisive power

  • EXAMPLES

  •  

The powerfully talented singer-songwriter-producer has been described by at least one music-industry insider as a "demiurge."

"A noisy group of video-game critics and theoreticians laments the rise of story in games. Games, in one version of this view, are best exemplified as total play, wherein the player is an immaterial demiurge and the only 'narrative' is what is anecdotally generated during play." — From Tom Bissell's 2011 book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

  • DID YOU KNOW?

  •  

In the Platonic school of philosophy, the Demiurge is a deity who fashions the physical world in the light of eternal ideas. In the Timaeus, Plato credits the Demiurge with taking preexisting materials of chaos and arranging them in accordance with the models of eternal forms. Nowadays the word "demiurge" can refer to the individual or group chiefly responsible for a creative idea, as in "the demiurge behind the new hit TV show." "Demiurge" derives via Late Latin from Greek "dēmiourgos," meaning "artisan" or "one with special skill." The "demi-" part of the word comes from the Greek noun "dēmos," meaning "people"; the second part comes from the word for worker, "ergon."

From Merriam-Webster Online at www.Merriam-Webster.com.

 

Dave



Spokesman-Review readers blog about news and issues in Spokane written by Dave Laird.