desk

Pluraldesks

Formsdesks, desking, desked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A table or case, usually with a flat top (and in earlier centuries a sloping one), used for writing or reading, often with a drawer underneath.

   He kept old letters locked in the drawer of his desk.

   Antique desks with sloping tops fetch high prices at auction.

   Note

   The furniture itself, and the sense the rest of the word builds on. Its line runs from Medieval Latin desca and Old Italian desco back to Latin discus. That makes desk a doublet of dais, disc, dish and disk, one Latin word put to very different uses. German Tisch, "table," belongs to the same family, a reminder that a desk began as a kind of table.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A department within certain businesses, such as newspapers or financial trading firms, responsible for a particular topic or area.

   The foreign desk assigned three reporters to cover the election.

   Rumors spread quickly across the firm's trading desks during the crisis.

   Similardepartment, section, bureau, division

   Note

   Newsrooms and trading floors divide their work by desk, and the word nearly always comes with a modifier naming the beat: the city desk, the sports desk, the options desk, the equities desk. The name of the piece of furniture has passed to the team that sits at it. A desk in this sense can assign reporters or take a position, but it is never something you sit at.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A reading table or lectern supporting the book from which a liturgical service is read, distinct from the pulpit used for the sermon; in the United States, also the pulpit itself.

   The lector read the lesson from the desk while the priest waited by the altar.

   In many American churches the preacher addresses the congregation from the desk itself.

   Similarlectern, pulpit

   Note

   Church furniture with a division of labor: the service is read from the desk, and the sermon is preached from the pulpit. American usage blurs that line and lets desk name the pulpit as well. From there the word stretches to the calling itself, so the desk can stand symbolically for the clerical profession.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A station for a string player in an orchestra, made up of a chair and a music stand, or a row of stations.

   The conductor asked the back desk of cellos to play more softly.

   Two violinists share every desk in the string section.

   Similarstand

   Note

   An orchestra counts its string players by desk, and the number carries rank. Sheila M. Nelson's The Violin and Viola (2003) observes that a competent violist occupies a first desk so as to play the occasional solos. Before a noun the phrase takes a hyphen, as in a first-desk violinist. After a noun, or standing alone, it stays open: she plays at the first desk.

5. 5
   nounabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of mixing desk.

   The sound engineer ran the whole concert from a single desk.

   He bought a secondhand eight-channel desk for his home recording studio.

   Note

   A clipping that works once the studio setting is clear. The full term is mixing desk, which is itself another name for a mixing console. In Rick Snoman's Dance Music Manual (2009), a signal goes out to an effects unit and is "returned into the desk." That is how engineers talk: the desk is where everything is routed in and out. Outside audio work, say mixing desk, or readers will picture furniture.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To furnish a person, room, or workplace with a desk or desks.

   The company desked all its remote workers when they returned to the building.

   We need to desk the new hires before Monday.

   Note

   A planner's and builder's verb that mostly appears in the passive and as a participle. Henry VII's will asks that his chapel "be desked." The Builder in 1914 specifies schoolrooms "desked for forty scholars," and the adjective survives in desked benches. The pattern to copy is a room desked for a stated number of people, rather than a person who is desked.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To reject a manuscript submitted to a journal, newspaper, or similar publication at the editor's first look, without sending it on for review.

   Senior editors desk most submissions before they ever reach a reviewer.

   The journal desked the paper without any explanation.

   Similarreject, spike, decline

   Oppositeaccept

   Note

   An editor's verb for the shortest possible rejection: the piece goes no further than the desk where it arrived. Newspapers and academic journals both use it. It is often heard in the passive, as in "the paper was desked." It is a blunter verdict than rejection after review, because the decision is made on first receipt, before anyone examines the work further.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To shut something away, as in a desk, and so to keep it carefully or treasure it.

   She desked the old love letters where no one would find them.

   Misers desk their gold and gloat over it in secret.

   Similarstash, hoard, hide, store, stow

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