demotic
Of ordinary people
Demotic describes the language of ordinary people rather than formal or literary registers: demotic speech, demotic Greek.
By extension, it can mean popular or accessible—aimed at common tastes rather than elite ones: The director's demotic sensibilities made his films box-office hits.
The word comes from Greek for "of the people."
Casual, everyday language
- slangInformal in-group vocabulary
- dialectRegional language variety
- patoisRegional informal speech
- argotGroup-specific coded speech
pidgin · creole · lingo · sociolect · idiomatic · nonstandard · regional · provincial
Occurring every day
- mundaneCommonplace, lacking excitement
- routineRegular sequence of actions
- ordinaryStandard, unremarkable
- commonplaceUnremarkable and frequent
workaday · prosaic · familiar · household · domestic · unremarkable · banal · plain
Bulk or populace
- populaceInhabitants of a place
- grassrootsCommon people as political base
- plebeianOrdinary, unrefined person
- proletariatLaborers lacking capital ownership
rank-and-file · working-class · everyman · ordinary · mainstream · public · multitude · egalitarian
Symbolic picture-based writing
- papyrusAncient plant-derived writing material
- RosettaTrilingual Egyptian artifact
- EgyptologyStudy of pharaonic civilization
- scribesProfessional document copiers
Coptic · inscriptions · pharaohs · Alexandria · Nile · antiquity · dynasties · artifacts
Made less complex
- readableEasy to understand
- understandableAble to be grasped
- inclusiveCovering all members
- universalAffecting all equally
clear · approachable · user-friendly · straightforward · uncomplicated · intelligible
colloquial
Casual, everyday language
argot · pidgin · creole · lingo · sociolect · idiomatic · nonstandard · regional · provincial · parlance
quotidian
Occurring every day
- mundaneCommonplace, lacking excitement
- routineRegular sequence of actions
- ordinaryStandard, unremarkable
commonplace · workaday · prosaic · familiar · household · domestic · unremarkable · banal · plain · unaffected
masses
Bulk or populace
- populaceInhabitants of a place
- grassrootsCommon people as political base
- plebeianOrdinary, unrefined person
proletariat · rank-and-file · working-class · everyman · ordinary · mainstream · public · multitude · egalitarian · folk
hieroglyphics
Symbolic picture-based writing
- papyrusAncient plant-derived writing material
- RosettaTrilingual Egyptian artifact
- EgyptologyStudy of pharaonic civilization
scribes · Coptic · inscriptions · pharaohs · Alexandria · Nile · antiquity · dynasties · artifacts · temples
simplified
Made less complex
- readableEasy to understand
- understandableAble to be grasped
- inclusiveCovering all members
universal · clear · approachable · user-friendly · straightforward · uncomplicated · intelligible
- Egyptologypyramids, pyramid, pharaohs, pharaoh, hieroglyphs
- GreekGreek, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Greek alphabet, Greek vocabulary
- writing historyalphabet, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, hieroglyphs, scripts
- ancient alphabetsalpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon
- ancient scriptsglyphs, cuneiform, hieroglyphs, hieroglyphics, Phoenician
- ancient writinghieroglyphs, cuneiform, papyrus, scroll, clay tablets
demoticformal
Following strict protocol
elevated · literary · highbrow · refined · cultivated
demoticelite
Superior select group
aristocratic · patrician · upper-class · esoteric · highborn
- demotic scriptEgyptian vernacular writing system