Desserts in the Desert or: Why the English Language is Hard to Learn

You thought remembering when to use "their", "there", or "they're" was complicated? Well, here's a set of words that will really make your head spin. Even if you're a native speaker of English, you probably don't even know about the existence of one of these words, as is made clear by the number of times I have seen the misspelled idiom "just desserts" in the writing of my peers.

I'll start my explanation with two Latin words, serere and servire. Now, serere is a useful word. The root simply means "join", and is used in words such as our "series". Servire also serves us well, as you can see here[1]. This pair of words, after getting thoroughly sloshed on their way through France, have become a confusing mish-mash of English words. Four of these are the subjects of this post.

"Desert" is a rather innocuous word. You probably think you know everything there is to know about it, but you're probably wrong. In fact, there are three homographs---words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings, and may or may not be pronounced the same---here. Taking our old friend serere, we can add de- to the beginning; this gives us "deserere", or "un-join", meaning to leave---desert. An area which is abandoned or deserted by life is then a desert. Luckily, these words do not share a part of speech, so confusion between them rarely occurs.

By now, you're probably wondering where our second Latin root, servire, comes in. This word means "serve", and we can add the same de- to it, giving us "deservire", or "un-serve"; when you clear the table after a meal, you are "un-serving" your guests (or masters, as the Latin for "slave" was servus). Eventually, there came to be a tradition of serving a treat at the end of a meal---a dessert, if you will.

Finally, let's come back around to the misspelled idiom, "just desserts". The correct spelling is thus: "just deserts". In this case, desert is a homophone of "dessert", and also derives from servire, specifically from the word "deserve"; it means "something to which you are entitled due to service". Historically, this would generally be a good thing. You served well, and deserve a reward---your "just deserts". Limiting those deserts to cake and ice cream seems rather droll[2], don't you think?

[1] Yes, that was a pun.
[2] And if you're wandering in the desert, you really ought to eschew sweets.

Introducing a Rather Eclectic Blog

I was chatting with a friend a few minutes ago, and the topic of English spelling came up. I mentioned a story about two Latin roots, and their transformation into a group of English words that are so twisted together in spelling, meaning, and pronunciation that many of us native speakers have trouble with them, without even realizing it. She suggested that I write a book about some of my random knowledge, gleaned from hours of reading books, blogs, and Wikipedia articles late at night. I felt a blog would be a more appropriate format, noting that not many people want to read a book on such mixed topics as software development, plant taxonomy, etymology, and haptic communication. This blog will contain some of my ramblings on these, and other unrelated topics.