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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

don.

A university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɒn/Received-Pronunciation/dɑn/General-American
  1. A university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge.

    UK
  2. An employee of a university residence who lives among the student residents.

    Canada
  3. A mafia boss, especially one who is Italian or Italian-American.

  4. A (usually Spanish or Italian) title of respect to a man, especially a lord or nobleman.

  5. Any man, bloke, dude.

    Multicultural-London-English
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dem- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *dṓmder. Proto-Italic *domanos Latin dominusder. English don From Latin dominus (“lord, head of household”), akin to Italian don, Sicilian don, Spanish don; from domus (“house”). Doublet of dom, domine, dominie, and dominus.

verb/dɒn/Received-Pronunciation/dɑn/General-American
  1. To put on clothing; to dress (oneself) in an article of personal attire.

    transitive
    To don one's clothes.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English don (“to put on”), from Old English dōn on; equivalent to do + on. Compare also doff, dup, dout.

verb/dɒn/Received-Pronunciation/dɑn/General-American
  1. Alternative form of don't

    alt-of · alternative
Where this word comes from

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.