Other forms: demands, demanded, demanding
To demand is to ask for something forcefully, as an order rather than a request. Demand an answer, demand to see the manager, they demanded more money.
It takes to plus a verb or that plus a clause — demand to know, demand that it stop — and in that construction the verb stays in the base form, which is one of the last places English uses the subjunctive. The noun means a forceful request, and in economics demand is the amount people want to buy, against supply. In demand means wanted by many people. Note demanding, which describes work or a person requiring a lot.
1verbdemandTo ask for something forcefully.
“She demanded to know who had authorised it.”
synonyms: insist on, require
2nounrequestA forceful request.
“Their demands were read out and refused.”
3nounamountThe amount of something people want to buy.
“Demand fell away completely after March.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
demand is a forceful asking.
Latin demandare meant to entrust or hand over, from mandare, to commit — the same root as mandate and command. French shifted it towards asking, and English took the stronger sense, so that demanding something is now nearer to ordering than to entrusting.
Middle English
demaunden
English, today
demand
From Middle English demaunden. From late Middle English demaunden, from Old French demander, from Latin demando. Displaced native Old English ġiwian (“to demand”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA