Other forms: desserts
Dessert is the sweet course that comes at the end of a meal. Order dessert, dessert menu, save room for dessert.
The name is about the clearing rather than the sweetness: it comes from the French for clearing the table, which is what happened before it arrived. Note the two s's — one s gives desert, the dry place, and just deserts, meaning what you deserve, is a third word again and is nothing to do with pudding.
1noundessertThe sweet course at the end of a meal.
“For dessert, we had chocolate cake with ice cream.”
dessert is a course of a meal.
Also accepted in games: pudding
French dessert comes from desservir, to clear the table — des plus servir. The sweet course is named for the clearing that preceded it.
Middle French
dessert
English, today
dessert
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French dessert, from desservir, from und + des-. Borrowed from Middle French dessert, from desservir (“disserve”), from dés- (“dis-”) and servir (“serve”), thus literally meaning “removal of what has been served”. Note: It was erroneously suggested (e.g. in "[http://books.google.com/books?id=iqwwqlRwTEMC&pg=PA3 Glucose syrups: Technology and Applications]" (Peter Hull, 2010)) that the word is derived from the name of Benjamin Delessert, the inventor of beet sugar. However, the term predates him by at least a century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA