Duke

How to spell duke

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce duke

What does duke mean?

1. nounA male holder of the highest hereditary rank of nobility below a prince.
2. verbTo fight, especially with fists; used chiefly in the phrase to duke it out.

Duke in a sentence

• noun

  The duke owned a vast estate in the countryside.

• verb

  The two rivals agreed to duke it out in the ring.

• noun

  A portrait of the late duke hung above the staircase.

• verb

  The lawyers preferred to duke it out in court rather than settle.

Where does duke come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin dux, which literally meant 'leader' or 'guide', formed from the verb ducere, 'to lead'. In the late Roman world dux became a military title for a provincial commander, and that sense of a leading man carried into the Romance languages. English borrowed it through Old French duc in the 1100s, attaching it to the highest rank of nobility below a prince. The same ducere root still leads through a crowd of English relatives, including 'conduct', 'educate', 'produce' and 'aqueduct', so the silent logic of 'leading' runs through them all. The slang sense of 'dukes' meaning fists is much later and probably arose in nineteenth-century boxing cant, possibly from rhyming slang, though that origin is not certain. The spelling is steady, but the vowel quality and the silent finish trip writers who expect a longer ending.

How the word is built

• duke (from Latin dux: leader, guide)