Dish — From Old English to English | etymologist.ai
dish
/dɪʃ/·noun·Old English 'disc', attested c. 700–900 CE in glosses including the Vespasian Psalter; the modern spelling 'dish' appears by c. 1300 CE·Established
Origin
From Greek diskos (a thrown discus) through Latin discus (a plate) and OldEnglish disc (a serving vessel), 'dish' charts a path from athletic competition to the dinner table — and in doing so, seeded English with three other words: disc, desk, and dais.
Definition
A flat or shallow concave vessel, typically circular, used for holding or serving food.
The Full Story
Old Englishbefore 900 CEwell-attested
Old English 'disc' (plate, bowl, platter) is directlyborrowed from Latin 'discus' (a disk, quoit, plate), itself from Greek 'diskos' (δίσκος), meaning a round flat object — originally the athletic discus thrown in competition. TheGreekword derives from PIE *deyḱ- (to throw, to show, to point), via the suffixed form *diḱ-sḱo-. The Old English form is attested in Ælfric and the Vespasian Psalter glosses (9th–10th century
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Greek diskos entered English four separate times, producing four distinct words: 'dish' (via Old English, borrowed from early Latin into Germanic), 'disc/disk' (re-borrowed from Latin in the 17th century), 'desk' (via Medieval Latin desca, a flat writing table), and 'dais' (via Old French, from a raised table in a great hall). Thesameflat, round, thrown object is now a dinner plate, a vinyl record, a piece of office furniture, and the elevated platform at the front of a lecture hall.
meat, not the preparation itself. This metonymic drift parallels words like 'glass' (vessel → contents). The same Latin 'discus' also produced three other Modern English words: 'disc/disk' (borrowed again in the 17th century directly from Latin/Greek for the geometric shape), 'desk' (via Medieval Latin 'desca', a writing table originally conceived as a flat disc-shaped surface, attested in English from c. 1382 in Wycliffe), and 'dais' (via Old French 'deis', a raised platform, from Latin discus as a table). 'Dish', 'disc', 'desk', and 'dais' are thus quadruplets — four English words from a single Greek source acquired at different periods. The PIE root *deyḱ- is also the ancestor of Latin 'dicere' (to say, point out), giving English 'diction', 'dictate', 'index', and Greek 'deiknynai' (to show). Key roots: *deyḱ- (Proto-Indo-European: "to throw; to show; to point out — source of Greek diskos, Latin dicere (to say/point), and English dish, disc, desk, diction, index"), *diḱ-sḱo- (Proto-Greek: "suffixed form: round thrown object — the immediate ancestor of Greek diskos"), discus (Latin: "disk, quoit, plate — the direct source of Old English disc and later words disc, desk, and dais").