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Where does the phrase just deserts come from?
Why do we say that someone has gotten their just deserts? Does this turn of phrase have anything to do with dessert (“a sweet food eaten at the end of a meal”) or desert (“a dry land with few plants and little rainfall”)? In fact, the phrase employs neither of these words. Instead, it uses a completely unrelated word that happens to be pronounced like the word for sweets and spelled like the one for a dry place: desert, meaning “reward or punishment deserved or earned by one’s qualities or acts.” This little-used noun is, as you might have guessed, related to the English verb deserve. It has nothing to do with arid, dry land, or with cookies and ice cream.
Synonyms
Examples of desert in a Sentence
Andy Coghlan, New Scientist, 14-20 Oct. 2006
The coastal plain is a desert in terms of precipitation—less than six inches fall annually—but what falls as snow stays to be later distributed by the wind.
—John Hildebrand, Harper's, November 2003
The house finch, a songbird native to the Western desert, has proved to be highly adaptable, having rapidly colonized the Eastern states after its release on Long Island in the early 1940's.
—Jane E. Brody, New York Times, 1 Jan. 2002
Adjective
While my very American mother swabbed the dishes, Dad lingered at the dinner table, recreating in visceral detail the taste of mint in a Bedouin teacup under a desert sky, or the golden plumage of his father's saluki dogs, or the filigreed robes of the young king at the camel races.
—Diana Abu-Jaber, Vogue, May 2007
… the place in the Texas Panhandle where Highway 66 rolled down off the land of farms and ranches into the beginnings of the desert grassland and red-rock country that dominated New Mexico.
—Susan Croce Kelly, Route 66, 1988
Verb
Boulet saw his longtime partner desert him in the midst of the storm, then had his wife and daughter skip town in its aftermath.
—Mike Flaherty, TV Guide, 10-16 Sept. 2007
Left alone for a moment, he feels mournful, bereft—and then panicky, when he thinks he has been deserted again.
—Richard Corliss, Time, 7 Mar. 2005
But now the building seemed deserted at two in the afternoon, and I soon learned that the paper, incredibly, was forced to advertise for applicants to the staff.
—Arthur Miller, Timebends, 1987
The inhabitants had deserted the town.
She had been married for just over a year when her husband deserted her.
He was deserted by his friends and family.
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Emily Alvarenga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Sep. 2023
Read full article The upper levels of the Red Sox’ minor league system were a desert with few shrubs when Bloom arrived.
—Alex Speier, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2023
Coachella’s identity is synonymous with the grounds of the Empire Polo Club; Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas would be unthinkable anywhere but the Nevada desert.
—Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork, 13 Sep. 2023
Recommended Perseverance In Pictures: Making a living on the world’s largest desert lake
The impeachment charges would then move to the Senate, where Democratic leaders would likely have no choice but to hold a trial.
—Farnoush Amiri, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Sep. 2023
Gannett, which owns daily newspapers across the nation, has laid off hundreds of staffers and shuttered entire publications in some communities, creating more news deserts.
—Jonah Valdez, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2023
Like Phoenix, the southern desert city was expected to see a high of 108 degrees with sunny skies.
—Abigail Celaya, The Arizona Republic, 10 Sep. 2023
In the summer, the desert surrounding the Salton Sea in California seems to glow from the glare of the unrelenting sun.
—Emma Grillo Kitra Cahana, New York Times, 10 Sep. 2023
As the powerful rainstorm that soaked the desert gathering became an emergency captivating the nation, the Rogers Park resident looked outside her camp shelter.
—Jake Sheridan, Chicago Tribune, 10 Sep. 2023
Christian Martinez, Los Angeles Times, 27 Nov. 2021
The temporary ban applies to areas within the South Coast Air Basin, which includes Orange County and non-desert portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to a news release from the agency.
—Dakota Smith, Los Angeles Times, 18 Dec. 2022
In northern Colombia, in a semi-desert region that juts into the Caribbean Sea, its dusty roads traveled by the Wayúu people with their blankets and colorful backpacks, is Cerrejón — one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world.
—Pablo Correa, Discover Magazine, 8 Dec. 2022
Nor do the sunbaked, semi-desert grasslands of Prescott National Forest south of Camp Verde look like the kind of place the wispy, water-loving trees would thrive.
—Mare Czinar, The Arizona Republic, 15 Sep. 2022
Construction of the mega-project is expected to start in earnest in the Karoo, a semi-desert natural region of the country, in 2022.
—Conrad Onyango, Quartz, 1 Feb. 2022
In non-desert environments, human waste can decompose when buried in soil rich in organic material, according to Kimberly Finch, BLM Utah communications director.
—The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 Sep. 2021
Along those skinny stretches of green, the ancient groups built villages, irrigated fields and planted corn, chili peppers and other crops, likely borrowed from non-desert farming villages to the north and east.
—Bridget Alex, Smithsonian Magazine, 26 Aug. 2021
Much of eastern Washington has an arid, semi-desert environment that specializes in warm-climate wines like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.
—Megan McCluskey, Time, 1 July 2021
David Fear, Rolling Stone, 8 Sep. 2023
Local businesses empty ahead of Idalia's landfall By Tuesday afternoon, the Cedar Key's quaint downtown, whose streets are lined with restaurants and local shops on stilts firm in the Gulf of Mexico, was deserted.
—Christopher Cann, USA TODAY, 30 Aug. 2023
By midday Tuesday, Cedar Key, an island community that sits about three miles out into the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s west coast, was deserted before a 4 p.m. evacuation order deadline.
—Annie Gowen, Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2023
Michael felt unlovable from an early age—one parent had deserted him and the other physically abused him.
—Kunlyna Tauch, Harper's BAZAAR, 17 Aug. 2023
Recommended From sea to desert The situation is different but no less dire far upstream in Nikopol, where the shoreline disappeared as the reservoir emptied in June, and officials were forced to truck in supplies of water, with support from across the country.
—Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 16 Aug. 2023
Now variations on the concept have spread, particularly in Europe, where deserted farming estates (such as Borgo San Felice Resort in Chianti) and derelict military housing ((Meneghetti Wine Hotel & Winery in Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula) have received retrofits for luxury travelers.
—Adam Erace, Fortune, 8 Aug. 2023
His upper register deserted him, replaced by a cavernous bottom end.
—Jeff Gage, Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2023
The tidy streets are nearly deserted on summer days, when temperatures of 100 degrees or more combine with high humidity in a dangerous brew.
—Vivian Nereim Andrea Dicenzo, New York Times, 28 Aug. 2023
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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'desert.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Noun (1)
Middle English, "barren expanse of land (either wooded or arid), wasteland," borrowed from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, borrowed from Latin dēserta "unfrequented places, wilderness," noun derivative from neuter plural (feminine singular in Late Latin) of dēsertus "empty of people, uninhabited" — more at desert entry 2
Adjective
Middle English desert, deserte "barren, uninhabited, deserted, forsaken," borrowed from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, borrowed from Latin dēsertus "empty of people, uninhabited," from past participle of dēserere "to part company with, abandon, leave uninhabited" — more at desert entry 3
Verb
borrowed from French déserter, going back to Old French, "to devastate, make uninhabited, abandon, leave," borrowed from Late Latin dēsertāre "to leave, abandon," frequentative of Latin dēserere "to part company with, abandon, leave uninhabited, leave in the lurch," from dē- de- + serere "to link together, join in a series" — more at series
Note: Note that Dictionnaire du Moyen Français divides deserter into two lemmas, assigning the senses "devastate, make uninhabited" to a derivative of desert "barren, uninhabited" (see desert entry 2) and the senses "abandon, leave" to a loan from Late Latin dēsertāre.
Noun (2)
Middle English desert, dissert "fact of deserving reward or punishment, worthiness, merit," borrowed from Anglo-French desert, deserte, desserte "merit, reward, fact of deserving reward or punishment, wrongful conduct, reason, cause" (also continental Old & Middle French), derivative of deservir "to deserve, merit, earn, be entitled to" — more at deserve
Note: The derivation of Old French desert from deservir has been variously explained. Trésor de la Langue Française describes desserte as formed from the present tense base (i.e., the base lacking -v-) of desservir ("Déverbal, formé sur le radical du présent de l'indicative de desservir"). P. Ruelle points in a different direction, judging both the Old French noun deserte and the adjective desert as a variant of the past participle deservi, descending from *desérvitum, a presumed by-form of classical dēservītum (see his "Notes sur le lexique des Isopets," Romania, vol. 101, no. 401 [1980], pp. 77-78).
Noun (1)
13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Adjective
13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Verb
1603, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1
Noun (2)
13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2
Phrases Containing desert
Dictionary Entries Near desert
Cite this Entry
“Desert.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/desert. Accessed 25 Sep. 2023.
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Kids Definition
desert
2 of 4 adjective
desert
3 of 4 noun
desert
4 of 4 verb
Noun
Middle English desert "barren land," from early French desert (same meaning), derived from Latin deserere "to desert, abandon," from de- "from, away" and serere "to join together"
Noun
Middle English deserte "quality of being worthy of a reward or punishment," from early French desert (same meaning), from deservir "to deserve," from Latin deservire "to devote oneself to"
Verb
from French déserter "to desert, abandon," from Latin desertare (same meaning), derived from earlier deserere "to desert, abandon" — related to desert entry 1
More from Merriam-Webster on desert
Nglish: Translation of desert for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of desert for Arabic Speakers
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about desert
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