just deserts
plural noun
Did you know?
Where does the phrase just deserts come from?
Why do we say that someone has gotten their just deserts? Does this turn of phrase have anything to do with dessert (“a sweet food eaten at the end of a meal”) or desert (“a dry land with few plants and little rainfall”)? In fact, the phrase employs neither of these words. Instead, it uses a completely unrelated word that happens to be pronounced like the word for sweets and spelled like the one for a dry place: desert, meaning “reward or punishment deserved or earned by one’s qualities or acts.” This little-used noun is, as you might have guessed, related to the English verb deserve. It has nothing to do with arid, dry land, or with cookies and ice cream.
Examples of just deserts in a Sentence
Kent Russell, Harper's Magazine, 28 Feb. 2025
And maybe, just maybe, some other people have yet to be served their own just deserts.
—Joe Leydon, Variety, 12 Mar. 2025
The Oilers took it to the Canucks — their way — perhaps offering some just deserts after how last Saturday ended.
—Daniel Nugent-Bowman, The Athletic, 24 Jan. 2025
Kakkar has a later over-the-top turn as the elderly Alexander Iden, who gives Cade his just deserts despite her character’s conspicuous frailty.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 15 Aug. 2024
Even if Israel metes out to Hamas its just deserts, the fighting could lead to a tremendous loss of life and push a peaceful settlement to the 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict even further out of reach.
—Kenneth M. Pollack, Foreign Affairs, 12 Oct. 2023
By the end of the novel, a bit of evil has been squashed, just deserts have been served, and new community has been formed – all without the tossing of a single bruising can.
—Erin Douglass, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Oct. 2023
Adam McKay’s atrocious Don’t Look Up was humorless about its climate-change heroes (except when Meryl Streep got her just deserts).
—Armond White, National Review, 6 Oct. 2023
Some social media users were not altogether sorry for the attack and suggested that the rich and powerful were getting their just deserts.
—Tatiana Stanovaya, Foreign Affairs, 8 Aug. 2023
Cite this Entry
“Just deserts.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/just%20deserts. Accessed 19 May. 2025.
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