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You Can Have Your Dessert in a Desert
Posted by Editormum on Thursday, 10 November 2005 in Definitions | ∞
Don’t mix the spelling of these two. It might leave a bad taste in your mouth — or your reader’s.
Dessert is the noun we all know and love as the final course of a meal. Sweets to wrap up a culinary experience, or to make a bad day better. It always has two S’s in it. Especially when you are saying that someone is getting his “just desserts.”
Desert may be a noun (pronounced /DEH zurt/) meaning a wasteland (not necessarily a hot, dry one), or it may be a verb (pronounced /duh ZURT/) meaning to abandon, especially in time of need.
Keep them straight by remembering that everyone’s favourite French dessert is chocolate mousse, and both have two S’s in the middle. But the desert is full of sand, which has only one S.
5 Comments
The moral of your post is never to depend upon a spell check program. Especially if you want English English, and Microsoft insists on there being only one form of English … American
Ariel, you’ve got me curious — do the Brits do it different? I’m an American, so I generally go with the American flow … but if you know a different way for the Brits, please amplify so I can make note of that in my blog. I’m all about BOTH kinds of English being correct, depending which side of the pond you’re on.
A complicated subject! But a few examples ; we call your roadside ‘curb’ by its correct name of ‘kerb’ ‘cos ‘curb to us means to halt or stop, like curbing bad behaviour. or a type of bit for a horse can be a ‘curb bit’, the same meaning.
In many words, we use two ‘L’s where you use only one. (can’t think of an example right now, but I will!)
We spell such words as ‘neighbour’ with a ‘u’ while you spell it ‘neighbor’, and this applies to all words ending with ‘our’, such as ‘savour’, ‘clamour’, ‘favour’, saviour’
Hell, you’ve got me interested now! I shall definitely pursue this further, and let you know some more different words, as I come across them, or think of them.
Oh, Ariel … I know THOSE….
I thought maybe there was something specific to today’s topic that the Brits did differently. Give me a couple of days and I will resurrect some of my Brits vs. Americans posts in this column.
Personally, I prefer colour, honour, neighbour, and kerb. I prefer theatre to theater, too. Much more correct and attractive, to my way of thinking. But I’ve always been a bit of an oddball.
And I know what y’all mean by knickers (much more genteel than underwear), a flat, a lift, and a trolley. All are completely different from what we mean! When one of you “knocks someone up,” it definitely doesn’t mean the same as it does if one of use “knocks someone up” — only our menfolk can accomplish that feat.
I learn a lot by reading the British authors … Sayers, Rowling, James, Lewis, Chesterton, Wodehouse (pronounced /WOOD haus/ for all you non-British speakers), and Dickens, for starters. I may be a patriotic American, but I love all things British, too.
How very flattering, my dear! Ariel’s somewhat scrawny chest expands with pride. Not that horrid European xenophobic pride, you understand; but genuine, pure Brit imperial pride!
Only kiddin’. I hate the damned place, and never intend to set foot in it again. But my passionate love affair with the English language burns as bright — or even brighter — than ever.
By the way, have you read “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by that erudite sylvan goddess Lynn Truss? A must-read for all lovers of English.
I shall post that piece on London cockney rhyming slang soon. Watch this space!