Generally speaking, a professor at the English universities of Oxford or Cambridge, a Catholic priest or abbot, and a crime boss don’t have much in common—but they do at least share one thing: the title don or dom (which has one etymological root). To some, it may seem confusing why people from such radically different walks of life share the same honorific. How did this happen? As is often the case with etymological quandaries such as this, the answer goes back over two thousand years to the ancient Romans.
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