Other forms: demurred, demurs, demurring
To demur is to raise an objection, mildly and politely. Demur at the price.
The mildness is the whole of it, since anybody demurring is not refusing outright. Without demur is the commonest phrase and means without any objection at all.
1verbdemurTo raise an objection, mildly and politely.
“She agreed without any attempt to demur.”
demur is an objecting.
Old French demorer means to delay, from Latin demorari, to linger.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)mer-
Latin
dēmorārī
Vulgar Latin
dēmorāre
Old French
demorer
Anglo-Norman
demorer
Middle English
demuren — to delay; to linger; to remain (in office); to keep, retain (?)
English, today
demur
Built from
From Middle English demuren (“to delay; to linger; to remain (in office); to keep, retain (?)”), from Anglo-Norman demorer and Old French demorer, demourer (“to remain, stay”) (modern French demeurer), from Vulgar Latin dēmorāre, from Latin dēmorārī, the present active infinitive of Latin dēmoror (“to delay, detain; to linger, tarry”), from de- + moror (“to delay, detain; to hinder, impede; to linger, loiter”) (from mora (“a delay; hindrance, obstacle”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European (s)mer- (“to fall into thinking; to remember”), probably referring to a time for thinking) + -or (variant of -ō).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA