Duke

A duke (male) (British English: /djuːk/ or American English: /duːk/) or duchess (female) can either be a monarch ruling over a duchy or a member of the nobility, historically of highest rank below the monarch. The title comes from French duc, itself from the Latin dux, 'leader', a term used in republican Rome to refer to a military commander without an official rank (particularly one of Germanic or Celtic origin), and later coming to mean the leading military commander of a province.

During the Middle Ages the title (as Herzog) signified first among the Germanic monarchies. Dukes were the rulers of the provinces and the superiors of the counts in the cities and later, in the feudal monarchies, the highest-ranking peers of the king. A duke may or may not be, ipso facto, a member of the nation's peerage: in the United Kingdom and Spain all dukes are/were also peers of the realm, in France some were and some were not, while the term is not applicable to dukedoms of other nations, even where an institution similar to the peerage (e.g., Grandeeship, Imperial Diet, Hungarian House of Magnates) existed.

Java (software platform)

Java is a set of computer software and specifications developed by Sun Microsystems, later acquired by Oracle Corporation, that provides a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones to enterprise servers and supercomputers. While less common, Java applets run in secure, sandboxed environments to provide many features of native applications and can be embedded in HTML pages.

Writing in the Java programming language is the primary way to produce code that will be deployed as byte code in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM); byte code compilers are also available for other languages, including Ada, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby. In addition, several languages have been designed to run natively on the JVM, including Scala, Clojure and Groovy. Java syntax borrows heavily from C and C++, but object-oriented features are modeled after Smalltalk and Objective-C. Java eschews certain low-level constructs such as pointers and has a very simple memory model where every object is allocated on the heap and all variables of object types are references. Memory management is handled through integrated automatic garbage collection performed by the JVM.

Duke (disambiguation)

A Duke or Grand Duke is a title of nobility for aristocrats of very high rank.

Duke, Dukes, or The Duke may also refer to:

People

Fictional characters

Narrow gauge engines (Thomas & Friends)

In Thomas & Friends, the Island of Sodor is home to a narrow gauge railway in the hills. These lines and the engines who work on them are some of the oldest on the island. The narrow gauge railway has some contact with The Fat Controller's standard gauge engines, but the location of the railway leaves the little engines in relative isolation.

North Western Railway

Victor

Victor is a dark red Hispanic tank engine in charge of the Sodor Steamworks. He supervises all the engines who journey in and out of the workshops, as well as Kevin, the clumsy yard crane. Victor always has a helpful, constructive disposition and is good-humored with everyone he meets. He speaks with a Cuban accent and spoke Spanish when he first came to Sodor.

Victor was introduced in the feature-length special Hero of the Rails. The show's staff were researching real-life engine workshops as inspiration for the Steamworks when they learned that one had a self-contained narrow-gauge line, used to transport parts internally. The staff decided they wanted an engine with a cab, and chose as a prototype ALCo's #1173, which was specially built for a sugar plantation line in Cuba. Some artistic licence was taken, as the original #1173 is a standard gauge locomotive. Victor made multiple further appearances in the thirteenth series, and has appeared in every series and special since.

Duke (Cambridge Town Club cricketer)

Duke (first name and details of birth and death unknown) was an English cricketer with possibly professional status who was active in 1831. He made his first-class debut in 1831 and appeared in one match as an unknown handedness batsman whose bowling style is unknown, playing for Cambridge Town Club (CTC). He scored four runs with a highest score of 4 and took no wickets.

References

Bibliography

Gong (title)

Gong (公, p gōng) was the highest title of Chinese nobles during Zhou Dynasty and the second highest title, ranked below Wang, from Han Dynasty onwards. Gong is usually translated as "duke".

Examples