Dish

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /dɪʃ/

Definitions

1. A shallow container used to hold or serve food ; a particular type of food item prepared and served ; a segment or show transmitted on radio or television
2. An item of tableware designed to hold meals ; a specific recipe or culinary preparation ; a scheduled portion of content broadcast via media
3. A flat vessel for eating or serving meals ; a distinct food creation served to eat ; a piece of entertainment or information delivered over airwaves

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "dish" is that its original sense was the flat plate itself, not the food on it. Old English "disċ" meant a plate, bowl or dish, and its ancestor, Proto-West Germanic "*disk", also carried the sense of "table", which is why German "Tisch" and Dutch "dis" still mean table today. The English word only came to mean a serving of food after the vessel's contents began to stand in for the vessel, a pattern seen in Russian "блю́до" (bljúdo), which likewise moved from a serving dish to a dish of food. The root goes back to Latin "discus", the same word that gave English "disc", "disk" and "desk". These are doublets: separate English words that all descend from one Latin source by different routes. "Discus" was the flat round object thrown in athletic contests, and the shared idea of flatness and roundness links the family. The Old English word's cousins in Scandinavian and Finnic languages, such as Swedish "disk" and Finnish "tiski", kept the table or counter sense more strongly.

Synonyms: plate, bowl, container, vessel, receptacle