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To: bonnuss_in_austin who wrote (34878)	3/20/2001 12:40:39 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 35685

de•sert 2 (d<=-zûrt2) n. 1. Often deserts Something that is deserved or merited, especially a punishment: They got their just deserts when the scheme was finally uncovered. 2. The state or fact of deserving reward or punishment. [ Middle English from Old French deserte, from feminine past participle of deservir to deserve; See deserve ] Notes: When Shakespeare says in Sonnet 72, “Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,/To do more for me than mine own desert,” he is using the word desert in the sense of “worthiness; deserving,” a word that is perhaps most familiar to us in the plural, meaning “something that is deserved,” as in the phrase just deserts. This word goes back to the Latin word dTservhre, “to devote oneself to the service of,” which in Vulgar Latin came to mean “to merit by service.” DTservhre is made up of dT-, meaning “thoroughly,” and servhre, “to serve.” Knowing this, we can distinguish this desert from desert, “a wasteland,” and desert, “to abandon,” both of which go back to Latin dTserere, “to forsake, leave uninhabited,” which is made up of dT-, expressing the notion of undoing, and the verb serere, “to link together.” We can also distinguish all three deserts from dessert, “a sweet course at the end of a meal,” which is from the French word desservir, “to clear the table.” Desservir is made up of des-, expressing the notion of reversal, and servir (from Latin servhre), “to serve,” hence, “to unserve” or “to clear the table.” tekboy@AHD.dic