Etymologically
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dessert

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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

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