deserter

Etymology

It is formed from English desert + -er,^[2][3][4] after French déserteur and Latin dēsertor (“one who forsakes, abandons, or deserts”), the agent noun of dēserō (“to leave, forsake”).^[2][4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged treats the word as a loan of those forms, both French and Latin.^[5] The verb desert is from déserter, from Late Latin dēsertō, a frequentative of the Latin verb,^[2][3][5] which is from dē- (“undo”) and serō (“to join together, put in a row”),^[3][5] from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to line up”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Someone who forsakes a cause, duty, party or friends: the 1630s in Etymonline,^[3] and in the OED a text perhaps from before 1645, A. Stafford's Just Apology.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word came in with the verb still new, desert being recorded from about 1600 and of military service from the 1640s.^[3] The general sense, with an implied breach of duty or allegiance, came first; the special sense of a soldier or sailor who quits the service without leave is dated from the 1660s,^[3] from 1667 in R. Allestree's Causes of Decay of Christian Piety.^[2] Johnson (1755) gives the two in that order, quoting the same book for the army sense.^[6] The military sense is the one dictionaries now single out.^[5] British underworld slang of the 1840s turned the word into a name for a sausage, after the deserter's red coat.^[7]

Timeline

• 1630s – one who forsakes a cause, duty or party.^[3] The OED's first quotation is from perhaps before 1645.^[2]
• 1667 – a soldier or sailor who quits the service without leave.^[2] Etymonline dates it to the 1660s.^[3]
• 1846 – slang, a sausage.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A member of the armed forces who leaves the service without permission and without meaning to return: The patrol picked up two deserters at the border.^[5][2][3]
2. A person who abandons a duty, a cause or anyone to whom service is owed: The party treated him as a deserter after the vote.^[5][2][6]

Related words

• desert
• desertion

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com