Don
Don names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Don or DOM (lord)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or DOM (lord), a title originally assumed by the popes, from whom it descended to bishops and other dignitaries, and finally to monks. In France, the title dom was conferred on the Carlovingian kings; in Portugal and Brazil it is now the universal title of the higher classes. The Spanish don was originally confined to the nobility, but is now bestowed by courtesy as indiscriminately as the English Mr. or Esq. The feminine is doña (Ital. donna). The Dan in "Dan Chaucer" is a form of the same word, and we still speak of "college dons.' DOÑA FRANCISCA, a German colony in the Brazilian state of Santa Catharina, lying between the Serra do Mar and the ocean, 14 miles inland from the port of São Francisco. Area, 550 square miles; pop. about 26,000. Chief town, Joinville.
Don a river of Russia
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a river of Russia, which issues from Lake Ivan- Ozero, in the government of Tula; and flows S. E. through governments Riazan, Tambov, Voronej, and Don Cossacks, to within 37 miles of the Volga, where it turns abruptly S. W. for 236 miles, and falls into the Sea of Azof; whole course nearly 900 miles. The chief tributaries are: Right bank, the Donetz and Voronej; left, the Khoper and Manitsch. Although not admitting vessels of much draught, the Don carries a large traffic especially during the spring floods, and a canal connects it with the Volga system of navigation. It has also very extensive and productive fisheries.
Don a river of Scotland
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a river of Scotland, county of Aberdeen, rising near the Banffshire border. It flows tortuously E. through the whole breadth of Aberdeenshire, and falls into the North Sea a little to the N. of Aberdeen, after a total course of 82 miles. Its salmon fisheries are of considerable value. Also, a river of Yorkshire, England, which rises near Cheshire, and joins the Ouse after a course of about 70 miles. It is navigable for small craft to Sheffield.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's said in 1921 that "a canal connects it with the Volga system of navigation"; the real link, the 101-km Volga–Don Shipping Canal, was not opened until 1952, together with the Tsimlyansk dam and reservoir, which drowned a long stretch of the lower river and now feeds irrigation across the steppe. The river is also longer than Collier's 900 miles — about 1,870 km (roughly 1,160 miles) — and the tsarist "governments" it names have given way to Russian oblasts, with the Don Cossack host dissolved after the Civil War. In Britain the two Dons stand much as described, though the Yorkshire Don, an industrial sewer for most of the twentieth century, has been cleaned up and fitted with fish passes, and salmon have returned to a river that once ran black through Sheffield. The Spanish and Portuguese usages of don and dom survive, as do Oxbridge dons.
Written for this edition, 2026.