deserts
/dɪˈzəːts
/plural noun
What a person deserves with regard to reward or (more usually) punishment: the penal system fails to punish offenders in accordance with their deserts...
- Commentators talk about deserving a result, precisely because there's such a wide gap between deserts and rewards.
- It would be our just deserts for being so ‘arrogant’.
- We must not demand justice if we are to see it anywhere; above all, we must not compare our deserts or rewards with those of others.
Usage
If a person gets their just deserts they get what they deserve. Deserts here is related to deserve, and is spelled with one -s- in the middle; a dessert is a sweet course eaten at the end of a meal. The -ss- spelling in the sense ‘what a person deserves’ is regarded as an error, although in the Oxford English Corpus it is as common as the correct spelling.
Phrases
get (or receive) one's just deserts
Origin
Middle English: via Old French desert, from deservir 'serve well' (see deserve).