“Daesh” is the acronym for ISIS as it is rendered in Arabic, “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa ash-Sham,” but since such acronyms are hardly ever used in Arabic, the term comes across as satirical. Although the word itself has no meaning, it is a pun with the word daes, which means “those who trample.” The term can also sound barbarous to some Arabs, vaguely suggestive of jahiliyya illiteracy and superstition.
