deserts
Use the noun deserts to describe what happens when someone receives what's coming to him — good or bad, he gets his "just deserts."
When you're using deserts to mean "what is deserved," it's pronounced like the banana split kind of desserts. This is because its root is the word deserve. Deserts most often follows the word just, to mean that someone gets the reward or punishment he or she really deserves to get. The bully who is expelled from school gets her just deserts, for example, and so does the brilliant scientist who wins the Nobel Prize.
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an outcome (good or bad) that is well deservedsynonyms: comeupance, comeuppance
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Vocabulary lists containing deserts
After a shipwreck separates her from her twin brother, Viola disguises herself as a man so she can pass safely through the land of Illyria. There she befriends Duke Orsino and tries to help him win the affections of Countess Olivia. Read the full text here.
Chief Joseph, also known as In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (which means "Thunder-Traveling-to-Loftier-Mountain-Heights"), surrendered on October 5, 1877 in Idaho. Realizing his Nez Perce tribe could not keep their lands against the US army, he said, "Hear me, my chiefs; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." These heartbroken words are not in the formal speech he later delivered in Washington D.C. In the published version in the North American Review, Chief Joseph accuses the Government of cheating and mistreating the tribe, but he ends with a hope for peace, freedom, and equality. E-text available here.
In this tragedy, the doomed romance between Egyptian queen Cleopatra and Roman general Marc Antony is set against the backdrop of Octavius Caesar's founding of the Roman Empire.