Desert vs dessert
A desert is a very dry place, often hot and sandy, with very little water. A dessert is a sweet food you eat at the end of a meal.
Dessert has two s's for sweet stuff. Desert has one s for sand.
desert noun
A very dry place, often hot and covered with sand or rock, with very little water and few plants.
- The caravan crossed the desert before the worst of the summer heat arrived.
- It almost never rains in this part of the desert.
dessert noun
A sweet food eaten at the end of a meal.
- We had chocolate cake for dessert.
- Save some room for dessert, because the pie is homemade.
Watch out
- Desert, the dry land, is stressed on its first part. Dessert is stressed on its second part. But the verb desert, and the desert in just deserts, sound exactly like dessert.
- Desert is also a verb that means to leave someone who needs you. It is stressed like dessert but keeps one s. A place with no people is deserted. In desert island, desert is said like the dry land.His friends deserted him when he needed them most.
- Desert can also mean what someone deserves, mostly in the phrase just deserts. It sounds like dessert but has one s. The spelling just desserts is common, but most usage guides call it a mistake.The cheats finally got their just deserts when the league banned them.
Test yourself
For blank, we had apple pie with ice cream.
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dessert. Apple pie is a sweet food eaten after the meal.
Very few plants can grow in the dry blank.
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desert. This is a dry place with very little water.
The kids ate their vegetables so they could have blank.
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dessert. The kids want the sweet food that comes at the end of the meal.
The travelers ran out of water while crossing the blank.
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desert. You cross a desert, a large dry area of land.