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Columnist Roger Harris offers an intriguing distinction between two types of movies: Country movies, which are not necessarily about the country, stress the old-time country virtues in an old-fashioned country way: you are never left in doubt as to who are the "good guys" or the "bad guys," and both always get their just deserts (he spells it "desserts," but no matter).1
Initially, I wrote the following sentence in a puzzle a few years ago: "Just planning what kind of pies to bake for desert is a puzzle." Certainly, figuring out what pie to make for a desert is quite a puzzle: cactus pie2, perhaps? Of course, I meant "dessert", not "desert".
While spelled almost the same, "desert" and "dessert" are pronounced quite differently, with "desert" accented on the first syllable while "dessert" is accented on the second. "Desert" is a noun that refers to an arid area of land3 whereas the noun "dessert" usually means a sweet dish eaten as the last course of a meal4. It's hard to remember which pronunciation goes with which number of esses, since there's nothing about one "s" or two that indicates which syllable should be stressed. It's enough to make you wish that English had accent marks as some other languages do, such as French.
Making matters more difficult is the verb "to desert", meaning to leave without permission, which is spelled exactly like the noun for a dry region but pronounced like "dessert". Also spelled and pronounced identically is the noun "desert", which is related to a different verb, "to deserve", and refers to a state of entitlement or what one deserves. In this sense, it is usually plural and most often found in the phrase "just deserts". When we say that someone got his or her just deserts, we mean that they received what they deserved, which is not necessarily a dessert5―in fact, it's often a bad thing.
Luckily, I recognized the misspelling in the puzzle before posting it. I suspect that misspellings of these words must be common, yet only two of my reference books mention the error6. To test whether spelling and grammar checking programs would have caught the mistake, I tried out the misspelled sentence in a few free online ones, and two out of three did indeed correct it.
I asked ChatGPT to check the following, more difficult example: "I will dessert my family, move to the dessert, subsist on just deserts, and get my just desserts." Here is how it responded:
You're close, but there are a couple of words that need tweaking for clarity:"I will desert my family, move to the desert, subsist on just desserts, and get my just desserts."
Here's why:
- Desert (verb): to abandon.
- Desert (noun): a barren, sandy area.
- Dessert (noun): a sweet course typically eaten at the end of a meal.
- Deserts (noun): refers to what one deserves, as in "getting what you deserve."
Let me know if you need further explanation!7
You're also close, ChatGPT, but you just missed the last misspelling.
Notes: