Messin' with Sasquatch

Most of you have probably seen these Jack Links beef jerky commercials before, where smug young people happen upon Sasquatch and decide to play practical jokes on him. They always get their just deserts in the end. My kids love these. They're some of the only commercials we never get tired of watching.

This is one of the first ones we remember seeing, though this one is an extended version that I found on YouTube. I had never seen the last 10 seconds of this before today.



And now, for today's language lesson, how many of you thought I misspelled "just deserts" in the paragraph above? From the internet:

The expression just desserts is a common misspelling of the actual idiom just deserts, which simply means to receive what one deserves. It is one of the more commonly misspelled idiomatic expressions, because it uses an archaic word most people are no longer familiar with. This type of spelling error based on a mishearing of a word, or misunderstanding of its context, is often referred to as an eggcorn.

The expression just deserts is pronounced just desserts, as though using the English word for a sweet after-dinner course, dessert. Most people when they see the word desert pronounce it differently, as though it is a large arid area of land, complete with sand dunes or palm trees. This is an understandable confusion, as the alternate meaning of desert and the accompanying pronunciation as used in just deserts has not been widely used in over a hundred years. Nonetheless, the spelling just desserts is technically incorrect.

There are two words we should consider here. The first is the word desert, as in, “Lawrence of Arabia spent many years traveling the desert,” with the meaning “arid wasteland.” This word comes from the same root as the word desert, as in, “The soldier deserted his company,” with the meaning “to abandon.” The common root here is the Latin word deserere, meaning to forsake, which made its way through French and Middle English. The secondary meaning of the word, however, with a pronunciation similar to dessert comes from an entirely different root. This use of desert, as in, “He got what was coming to him -- his just deserts,” comes from the Latin deservire through the French. This sense of desert is analogous to the word deserve, which originates from the same root. The pronunciation just desserts makes much more sense if we consider the word deserve.

It should be noted that the use of desert in the sense of to deserve has been in English since the mid-13th century. In fact, the use of the phrase just deserts--with the pronunciation just desserts--is noted as early as the end of the 16th century, in the line, “Upon a pillory, that all the world may see: A just desert for such impiety.”

Many people, because of the confusion stemming from the pronunciation of just deserts that makes it sound like just desserts, have come up with their own folk etymologies and meanings for this phrase. The most common of these false origins is that just desserts refers to the reward you get at the end of your meal--your dessert--and by extension can be used metaphorically for any sort of reward at the end of a job well done. While this is an admirable attempt at explaining the meaning, the truth is much simpler. We can talk about just desserts all we want, but when one receives one’s just deserts, one gets exactly what one deserves.

So now you know! You been edumacated.