DOCTORATE.  The degree of a doctor.—­Webster.

The first diploma for a doctorate in divinity given in America was presented under the seal of Harvard College to Mr. Increase Mather, the President of that institution, in the year 1692.—­Peirce’s Hist.  Harv.  Univ., App., p. 68.

DODGE.  A trick; an artifice or stratagem for the purpose of deception.  Used often with come; as, “to come a dodge over him.”

  No artful dodge to leave my school could I just then prepare.
    Poem before Iadma, Harv.  Coll., 1850.

Agreed; but I have another dodge as good as yours.—­Collegian’s Guide, p. 240.

We may well admire the cleverness displayed by this would-be Chatterton, in his attempt to sell the unwary with an Ossian dodge.—­Lit.  World, Vol.  XII. p. 191.

DOMINUS.  A title bestowed on Bachelors of Arts, in England. Dominus Nokes; Dominus Stiles.—­Gradus ad Cantab.

DON.  In the English universities, a short generic term for a Fellow or any college authority.

He had already told a lie to the Dons, by protesting against the justice of his sentence.—­Collegian’s Guide, p. 169.

Never to order in any wine from an Oxford merchant, at least not till I am a Don.—­The Etonian, Vol.  II. p. 288.

  Nor hint how Dons, their untasked hours to pass,
  Like Cato, warm their virtues with the glass.[21]
    The College, in Blackwood’s Mag., May, 1849.

DONKEY.  At Washington College, Penn., students of a religious character are vulgarly called donkeys.

See LAP-EAR.

DORMIAT.  Latin; literally, let him sleep.  To take out a dormiat, i.e. a license to sleep.  The licensed person is excused from attending early prayers in the Chapel, from a plea of being indisposed.  Used in the English universities.—­Gradus ad Cantab.

DOUBLE FIRST. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., a student who attains high honors in both the classical and the mathematical tripos.

The Calendar does not show an average of two “Double Firsts” annually for the last ten years out of one hundred and thirty-eight graduates in Honors.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 91.

The reported saying of a distinguished judge,... “that the standard of a Double First was getting to be something beyond human ability,” seems hardly an exaggeration.—­Ibid., p. 224.

DOUBLE MAN.  In the English universities, a student who is a proficient in both classics and mathematics.

“Double men,” as proficients in both classics and mathematics are termed, are very rare.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 91.

It not unfrequently happens that he now drops the intention of being a “double man,” and concentrates himself upon mathematics. —­Ibid., p. 104.