a circle in the Austrian kingdom of Galicia, in the eastern frontier, bordering on the Russian territory. Its extent is about 1450 square miles. It comprehends three cities, nineteen market-towns, and 242 villages. It contained, in 1817, 30,829 houses, and 149,488 inhabitants, of whom 7226 were Jews. Its rivers run by the Dniester into the Black Sea. It is a fertile district, abounding in wheat, maize, pulse, tobacco, aniseed, honey, wax, cattle, and all kinds of fruit. D, THE fourth letter of the alphabet, and the third consonant. Grammarians generally reckon D among the lingual letters, supposing the tongue to have the principal share in its pronunciation; though the Abbé de Dangeau is rather inclined to regard it as a palate letter. The letter D is the fourth in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Greek, and Latin alphabets; in all of which languages except the last it has the same name, though somewhat differently spoken, namely, in Hebrew, Samaritan, and Chaldee, Daleth or Dhaloth, in Syriac Doleth, and in Greek Delta. The form of our D is the same with that of the Latins, as appears from all the ancient medals and inscriptions, and the Latin D is no other than the Greek Δ, with the angle on the left hand rounded off into a curve. The Δ of the Greeks, again, is borrowed from the ancient character of the Hebrew Daleth; which form it still retains, as is shown by Souciet, in his Dissertation on the Samaritan Medals.

D is sometimes put for the aspirate Th, as Theos, Deus; sometimes it is converted into B, as Duellum, Bellum, Duelona, Bellona. It has also an affinity with T, as Quintilian has observed (lib. i. c. 4); and hence, anciently, we meet with Alexander and Cassandra, for Alexander and Cassandra, and, vice versa, quadamnis and adque for quodamnis et atque. In like manner, it is interchanged with R for the sake of euphony, as in meridies for medacies. In praenomens D stands for Decimus, and in the titles of emperors, for Divus. It is also a numeral letter, representing five hundred. This arises from the circumstance that the letter D is analogous in form to Ω, the half of CIΩ, which is the Roman numeral expression for a thousand. With a dash placed on the top thus, D, its value is increased tenfold, or, in other words, it stands for five thousand. Used as an abbreviation, D has various significations, for which see article ABBREVIATIONS.