Other forms: desks
A desk is the table you work at. The one with your computer on it, a drawer of pens that do not write, a lamp in the corner and a chair pulled up to it — a school desk, an office desk, the kitchen table pretending to be a desk.
Desks turn up all over a building without being furniture at all. The reception desk in a hotel, the front desk of a police station, the information desk at the airport: the counter where somebody sits and deals with you. In a newspaper the news desk and the sports desk are whole departments — 'I'll pass it to the picture desk.' A desk job is one you do sitting down, and desktop means both the flat surface and the screen where your computer keeps its icons.
1noundeskA table with a flat top for writing, reading or working at.~80%
“He cleared his desk before the holidays.”
2nouncounterA counter in a hotel, office or airport where a member of staff deals with the public.~10%
“Leave your key at the front desk when you check out.”
3noundepartmentA department of a news organisation covering one subject.~10%
“The story was handed to the sports desk.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
desk is a piece of furniture.
Desk came into Middle English as deske from Medieval Latin desca, reshaped from the Old Italian desco, which goes back to Latin discus. That same discus gave English dish, disc, disk and dais. A writing desk, a dinner plate and the platform a speaker stands on are all one Latin word in different clothes.
Latin
discus
roa-oit
desco
Medieval Latin
desca
Middle English
deske
English, today
desk
From Middle English deske, desque, from Medieval Latin desca, modified from roa-oit desco, from Latin discus. a doublet of dais and disc and discus and dish and disk and diskos. See also German Tisch, "table".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA