Would You Like One S or Two with Your Dessert?

Spelling desert and dessert causes many of us to question ourselves. Does the word we’re writing have one S or two? It’s not just dyslexic students who aren’t sure. These words are often paired on school spelling lists. Though the words have different pronunciations, you can’t sound out the spelling difference. Without knowing a little more about these words, students just try to memorize the spellings.

I’ve seen that some people use a mnemonic like “sweet stuff” to remember <SS> in dessert. That may help some students.

Of the two, desert seems to be the more interesting word. It’s used as three parts of speech.

noun: Scorpions live in the desert.
adjective: Scorpions live in desert climates. It’s a deserted island.
verb: I will desert this seat if a scorpion comes my way.

Yes, /’dɛz ɚt/, the noun, and /dɪ’ zɝt/, the verb, are related words. Notice we pronounce the first <e> in desert (noun) with the /ɛ/ (lax-E/short-E) phoneme. But in desert as in “I will desert this seat” or “a deserted island,” the first <e> could be pronounced as /ɪ/ (lax-I/short-I) or maybe, if you’re like me it feels like schwa /ə/, an unstressed, reduced vowel.

FACT: Within a word family, spelling remains constant even when pronunciation changes.

Desert comes to English from a French word that began in Latin. The <sert> part of desert comes from a Latin root, *serere that meant “join together, arrange, put in a row.” With the <de-> prefix added to <sert>, desert essentially meant a barren land, not arranged, and likely looked deserted or abandoned.

When I was looking up this word in Etymonline.com, a site I recommend bookmarking to answer all the why spelling questions students have, I wondered if desert was related to insert. It is.

How do I know desert, deserted, and insert are related words?

1) They share a common base spelling <sert> AND 2) they share a common ancestor, or root. You have to look carefully at the Etymonline.com entries for each of the potentially related words. Two words might have a common base spelling but we make the connection only when they share an etymological ancestor and carry its meaning.

In this case, the root is the Latin *serere, with the orthographic denotation in quotes: “join together, arrange, put in a row.” Orthographic denotation is a mouthful to say it’s the sense, or meaning, tied to the spelling through the word’s history. All the words in this word family have some connection to the meaning, “join together, arrange, put in a row.”

Another related word is assert like “An assertive student spoke up about his or her needed accommodations.”

Prefixes Adjust the Meaning

When you insert the straw into your water bottle, you’re joining the pieces by putting it into ____. The <in-> prefix can suggest “in, into.” (There’s another <in-> prefix that gives the sense of “not” as in the inaccurate.)

Being assertive can be putting things into a row to others or for oneself. <AS-> is a prefix that suggests “to, toward.” That’s why there are two <ss> in assert. One is part of the prefix, one is part of the base spelling. You’ll notice this pattern in so many polysyllabic words that begin with a vowel letter followed by a double consonant letter.

A desert might be a land not arranged, not organized. When we desert others, we leave them hanging, not settled, not arranged. Etymonline.com uses the word, “abandoned” in the entry. This word has a <de-> prefix that gives the sense in this word of “undo,” but it can also mean “down, from, off” and other senses.

The Word Family’s Morphology

We can create a lot of word sums with these three members. The word sums show the morphemes, meaningful word parts. When we write a word sum, we separate prefixes, suffixes, and base elements by a plus sign.

Here are a few.

as + sert –> assert; as + sert + ed –> asserted; as + sert + ive –> assertive; re + as + sert + s –> reasserts
in + sert –> insert; in + sert + ing –> inserting; in + sert + ion –> insertion; in + sert + s –> inserts
de + sert –> desert; de + sert + s –> deserts; de + sert + ed –> deserted; de + sert + ing –> deserting; de + sert + er –> deserter; de + sert + ion –> desertion
dis + sert + ate + ion –> dissertation This is one I hadn’t noticed until just now as I was using Word Searcher, an incredibly useful free tool.

The base of this word family is a bound base, meaning <sert> must have at least a prefix to be a complete English word. As we’ve seen, there are many suffixes we can add also.

Using the word sums with students helps them make sense of this word family and specifically how to spell desert. It can connect the spelling to the meaning for long-term memory.

One S or Two in Dessert?

Even though the thought of dessert makes our mouths water, there’s less to dig into with this word family. It comes from the French word meaning “serve,” servir. The <des-> prefix tells us we’re going to “un-______.” The French word, *desservir, means to “clear the table,” remove what’s been served, which is is what often happens before dessert is served (Etymonline.com).

The <sert> part of dessert comes from servir, a French word meaning “serve.” These two <sert> spellings come from different roots with different meanings. Desert’s <sert> comes from the Latin root, serere, that meant “join together, arrange, put in a row.” This is a great example of the importance of noticing the etymology and meaning the word carries. Same spelling, but different roots and different orthographic denotations. And different prefixes.

I’ll have two (SS) esses in dessert, please. One is part of the French prefix and one is part of the French base: des + servir. Like I said, we see this pattern in many, many English words.

Look at these other English words having a prefix that ends with the base’s first letter:

accident –> ac + cide + ent Other relatives: decide
suffix –> suf + fix Other relatives: prefix, fixate
succeed –> suc + ceed Other relatives: proceed, exceed
commit –> com + mit Other relatives: admit, permit

Assimilated Prefixes is the term for these prefixes whose spelling coordinates with the base spelling. This practice makes saying these words easier. It has to do with co-articulation, what our mouth has to do to create these sounds consecutively. The assimilation happened in Latin, long before they made it to English speakers. The default forms of these prefixes listed above are as follows:

ad- meaning “to, toward;” consider saying “adcident” and you’ll see why this assimilation was preferred
sub- meaning “below, under, smaller,” etc. Try saying “subfix” or “subceed.” Both the <suf-> and the <suc-> are assimilated prefixes from the default <sub-> prefix.
com- is the default prefix here. It has assimilated prefixes such as <co->, <cog->, <col->, <con->, and <cor->.

Teaching students about assimilated prefixes helps them recognize the pattern and notice the base spelling and its prefix. Now that you’re aware of these assimilated prefixes, you’ll start seeing them more. When you teach your students about them, they will too. Win-Win!

Helping Your Students

You could draw a line down a piece of paper. One side for desert. One side for dessert.
On each side, use each word in a sentence specific to the meaning of the word.
Look up each word in Etymonline.com. Make note of where the word came from and what it meant (the part in quotation marks).
Notice the prefixes and what sense they add to the words.
Help students notice that the <sert> spelling is the same but they came from different roots with different meanings (orthographic denotations).
Write word sums with the <desert> word family. You can include its relatives like assert, insert, etc.
Write word sums for the <dessert> word family. dessert + s –> desserts.
Teach students about assimilated prefixes, using some of the examples in this post.
Look at the different parts of speech for desert. Write sentences using desert as a noun, plural noun, adjective, and verb with various forms.
Write sentences with dessert and desserts.
Learn about the topics of deserts and desserts.
Make it practical and interesting!

The More You Understand about Spelling…

Spelling desert and dessert just became a bit more interesting. The more you, as the teacher, tutor, or parent know about how English works, the easier it is to confidently talk with your student or child about spelling. When it makes sense to you, your student has a tremendously greater opportunity to see English as an ordered spelling system that they can understand and confidently use in their daily life.

Now, who wants dessert? Happy Spelling!

You can learn more about using morphology and etymology with students from other posts on the blog and from the Learning Resources shop.