Word.ws English Dictionary

don

/dɒn//dɑn/

don noun: a university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge. Also the alternative form of don't.

Noun (1)

don (plural dons)

  1. (UK) A university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge.
    • No one feeds at the high table except the dons and the gentlemen-commoners, who are undergraduates in velvet caps and silk gowns[.]1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], chapter I, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC, page 12
    • The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it’s hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you’ll give him as a cue.1876, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XVI, in Daniel Deronda, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book II (Meeting Streams), page 321
  2. (Canada) An employee of a university residence who lives among the student residents.
  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.
    • Wo often of an evening go and hear the band in the square opposite the captin-giniral’s palace—it is here were the dons and donnas and all the fashionables assemble, and I must say it’s amusing.1845 September, Charles F. Ellerman, “Reminiscences of the Island of Cuba”, in Simmonds’s Colonial Magazine, volume VI, number 21, London, chapter VIII (Mrs. Smith seized with furor scribendi, writes...
    • Time was when the walker amid California vales could stop at some cool cellar hid in these western hills and pour from great flagons a shimmering glass of cool red wine. Nowadays, the hand of the law has stepped in and spoiled all this, because the hordes of wanderers who have come west have made...1906 August, Harry H. Dunn, “Afoot in California”, in Western Field, volume 9, number 1, San Francisco, Calif., page 481, column 1
  5. (Multicultural-London-English) Any man, bloke, dude.
    • I’m confused like who’s this don
      .22 bells and that who’s on2017 October 31, Loski, “Olympic Chinging”, from 1:55
    Synonyms:
    donny

Verb

don (third-person singular simple present dons, present participle donning, simple past and past participle donned)

  1. (transitive) To put on clothing; to dress (oneself) in an article of personal attire.
    • To don one's clothes.
    • Now when he had reached the King's capital wherein was Alaeddin, he alighted at one of the Kháns; and, when he had rested from the weariness of wayfare, he donned his dress and went down to wander about the streets, where he never passed a group without hearing them prate about the pavilion and its...1886-88, Richard Francis Burton, The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night
    Antonyms:
    doff

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Don

Don

  1. A diminutive of the male given names Donald, Donovan, and Gordon.
    • The bill, which lawmakers approved in a 211-206 vote, now moves to the Republican-led Senate for consideration. One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, voted with Democrats Thursday against the measure.2025 May 8, Veronica Stracqualursi and Sarah Ferris, “House passes GOP-led bill to rename Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America”, in CNN

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Don

the Don

  1. A river, the fifth-longest in Europe, in Tula, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Volgograd and Rostov Oblasts, Russia, flowing 1160 miles to the Sea of Azov.
    • Thence they marched againſt Orna, a Port Towne on the Riuer Don, where were many Gazarians, Alanians, Ruſſians, and Saracens, which he drowned with the Riuer running through the Citie, turning it out of the chanell.1613, Samuel Purchas, “[Asia.] Of the Tartarians, and of diuers Nations which they subdued; with their Pristine Rites.”, in Purchas His Pilgrimage. Or Relations of the World and the Religions...

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Don

the Don

  1. A river in Aberdeenshire council area, Scotland, United Kingdom, flowing 62 miles to the North Sea at Aberdeen.
  2. A river in South Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, on which Doncaster is situated.
  3. A minor river in Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom, which joins the Tyne at Jarrow.
  4. A river in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, named after the River Don in Yorkshire.
    Synonyms:
    Don River, River Don
  5. A locality in the City of Devonport, Tasmania, Australia.

Proper noun (4) capitalized: Don

Don

  1. A surname.

Noun (2) capitalized: DON

DON (uncountable)

  1. dissolved organic nitrogen
  2. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of deoxynivalenol, a toxic byproduct of Fusarium head blight of barley.
    Synonyms:
    vomitoxin

Also used as

don is also the alternative form of don't.

don meaning in Hindi, Sanskrit, Thai and Vietnamese

don in Hindi

mafia boss
डॉन ḍŏn

don in Sanskrit

put on clothes
प्रवस्ते pravaste

don in Thai

put on clothes
ใส่ sài

don in Vietnamese

put on clothes
mặc

Examples of don in a sentence

  • The music of his speech was pitched high, alternately poetic and pedantic, as if the soul of an Oxford don had been awkwardly reincarnated in the body of a boy.2015, Steve Silberman, “Introduction”, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New...
  • Having donned our PPE, we walk through the site to the prefab that controls access to the tunnel.2022 March 23, Paul Bigland, “HS2 is just 'passing through'”, in RAIL, number 953, page 41:

All 40 example sentences with don

Synonyms of don

11 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of don

Forms of don

Noun
pluraldons
Verb
third-person singular presentdons
present participledonning
past participledonned
pastdonned

Plural of don: dons

Origin of 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.

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

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma.

Words formed from don

Phrases with don

13 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with don

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about don

What does don mean?
Don means a university professor, particularly one at Oxford or Cambridge.
What is don in Hindi?
Don in Hindi is डॉन (ḍŏn). See Don meaning in Hindi.
How do you use don in a sentence?
The music of his speech was pitched high, alternately poetic and pedantic, as if the soul of an Oxford don had been awkwardly reincarnated in the body of a boy.
What part of speech is don?
Don can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce don?
Don is pronounced /dɒn/ (UK).
What is the plural of don?
The plural of don is dons.

Words near don in the dictionary

  1. Domvilles
  2. Domward
  3. domy
  4. Domzalski
  5. Domzalskis
  6. don
  7. Don Andres Soriano
  8. Don Bosco
  9. Don Carlos
  10. Don Cossacks
  11. Don Faustino Pagaduan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: don (page history and authors); Don (page history and authors); DON (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-don.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Don.wav.

Cite this entry: “don.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/don. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.