the.com/don
The honorific that means you've either taught Oxford or run a crime family.
means To put on clothing, or a respectful title for a university fellow, Spanish nobleman, or mafia boss.
from As a verb, 'don' is a medieval contraction of 'do on' — the same 'do' that gave us 'doff' (do off). As a title, it comes from Latin 'dominus' meaning 'lord' or 'master,' which became 'don' in Spanish and Italian as a mark of respect for nobility and clergy. English borrowed that sense twice over: Oxford and Cambridge adopted it for senior fellows, and much later, popular culture (think 'The Godfather') handed it to Mafia bosses, stretching one humble Latin word across some very different kinds of authority.
- origin
- From Latin dominus, meaning lord or master
- academia
- British university professor, especially Oxford or Cambridge
- mafia use
- Popularized by The Godfather as mob boss title
- spanish root
- Also a Spanish courtesy title before a man's name