[hunter2_]

While it's true that today we would pronounce de- and dae- each as /dee/ without differentiation, TFA points out an interesting notion:

> By the late 16th century, the general supernatural meaning was being distinguished with the spelling daemon, while the evil meaning remained with demon.

Given that both spellings were used simultaneously back then for the goal of differentiation that transcends mere archaic-vs-modern, I have to wonder if there was verbal differentiation accompanying it as well. I suppose this depends on a more precise estimate of æ's deprecation through the transition from Old to Middle to Early Modern to Modern English (specifically, whether its original /æ/ [0] sound persisted into Early Modern or was already /ee/ by then).

[0] Which, confusingly, has several possibilities [1]. Since we're talking about the 16th century though, we might go with the sound it also represents in IPA, as in ash, fan, happy, last, etc. although I can't say I've ever heard anyone utter /dam ən/...

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70927/how-is-%C3...