dessert

Pronunciation

• IPA: /dɪˈzɝt/; /dɪˈzɜːt/ (UK)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French dessert (“last course of a meal”),^[2][3][4] literally the removal of what has been served, from desservir (“to clear the table”),^[3][5][6] from des- (“removal, undoing”) and servir (“to serve”),^[5][3] from Latin serviō (“to serve”).^[7][8] French also had the feminine desserte.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A course of fruit, nuts and sweetmeats served after dinner: 1540, in the accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, in the OED's revised entry.^[2] Barnhart, Etymonline and Merriam-Webster date it to 1600, as desert,^[3][5][8] and the spelling dessert to 1666, in Pepys.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The dessert was originally fruit and nuts after the meal; in later use it came to mean especially a sweet course,^[2][9] and in Britain the older sense, fresh fruit served after the sweet, lingered.^[8][10] A single sweet dish eaten as dessert is from 1745.^[2] Dessert-wine is from 1733 and dessert-spoon from 1776.^[5]

Timeline

• 1540 – a course of fruit and sweets after dinner.^[2]
• 1600 – desert.^[3][8]
• 1666 – the spelling dessert, in Pepys.^[3]
• 1733 – dessert-wine.^[5]
• 1745 – a sweet dish.^[2]
• 1776 – dessert-spoon.^[5]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The sweet course at the end of a meal, or a dish served as one.
2. (chiefly British, dated) Fruit and nuts served after a meal.

Word family

• dessertspoon
• dessert fork
• dessert wine

Related words

• serve
• service

Usage notes

Ayto calls it a first cousin of desert "what one deserves", from French deservir, a compound of the same verb serve with a different prefix; it is unrelated to desert, a barren region, from Latin dēsertus.^[11] Its early English spelling was desert.^[3]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black