dished

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of dish.

   He dished the pasta onto warm plates before the guests arrived.

   The coach dished out praise after the team's win.

   Note

   One spelling covers both the simple past and the participle, so the meaning comes entirely from the verb behind it: food served, gossip passed on, an insult delivered, or a surface pressed hollow. Two of those meanings hardened into adjectives of their own. They are the concave sense and the old "beaten" sense, which grew from an archaic slang verb meaning to outwit or defeat.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a shallow concave shape, curved inward like a dish.

   Like a satellite antenna that curves inward to catch a signal.

   Erosion had left the rock with a dished hollow where rainwater pooled.

   The plate's dished center held the sauce without spilling.

   Similarconcave, hollow, cupped, sunken, bowl-shaped

   Oppositeconvex, domed, flat

   Note

   A wheelwright's word as much as a potter's: bicycle and cart wheels are often dished, built as a shallow cone rather than a flat disk. Because it is the participle of the verb meaning to press something hollow, dished usually implies a surface shaped or worn that way. Plain concave only describes the curve.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Worn out and beaten; completely defeated or spent.

   Like a candle burned all the way down to nothing.

   By midnight the gamblers were dished and could play no more.

   I fear I am clean dished. The Heads of Houses are at this very moment concocting a manifesto against me.

   1841, John Henry Newman, “[Letter to Harriet Mozley]”

   Note

   Early Victorian slang for being done for. John Henry Newman fears in 1841 that he is "clean dished" as the Heads of Houses move against him, and Geraldine Jewsbury is "very dished" in 1845 after a cold. Writers often set it in inverted commas, which shows it was felt as slang even then. Today it reads as period color, so it suits historical writing rather than modern talk of tiredness.

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