deserts

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of desert.

   Some of the world's largest deserts are spreading as the climate warms.

   Explorers crossed two scorching deserts before reaching the coast.

   Note

   Two different nouns share this plural. Besides arid regions, it carries the sense of what a person has earned, a sense that lives mostly in the plural. In Arthur Conan Doyle's The Boscombe Valley Mystery (1891), an arrested man calls his arrest "no more than his deserts." That word means a just punishment or reward and has nothing to do with sand. Nor is it desserts: using this spelling for the sweet course is obsolete.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of desert.

   Whenever the pressure mounts, he deserts his post without warning.

   Her courage rarely deserts her, even in the hardest moments.

   Note

   Whatever deserts someone was supposed to stay. The verb carries a sense of broken obligation, whether a person abandons what depends on them or a soldier leaves a unit without permission. A quality such as courage can be the subject as well as a person. It is spelled exactly like the plural noun, but position tells them apart: a subject comes before the verb, and an object usually follows it.

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