desks

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of desk.

   The movers carried a dozen desks up to the new office.

   Old school desks with hinged lids still line the museum hall.

   Note

   Every kind of desk shares this one regular plural: the writer's table, the lectern in a church, the department of a newspaper or trading firm, and the orchestra station where string players sit in rows. A newsroom's sports and city desks and the desks of a violin section are pluralized the same way. Followed by an object, as in "the editor desks the story," the same spelling is the verb form instead.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of desk.

   The night editor desks the breaking report and trims it for length.

   Each morning the supervisor desks the trainees according to their assignments.

   Note

   A transitive form that always takes an object. The verb behind it can mean shutting something away as if in a desk, fitting a room out with desks, or, in publishing, turning down a submitted article on arrival without further review. An editor who desks a manuscript has therefore rejected it at the door. Readers can easily mistake that for simply handling it at the desk.

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