dish [OE] Dish is related to desk, which explains why corresponding forms in Dutch and German (disch and Tisch) mean ‘table’. All derive from Latin discus (see disc), which English took directly from Latin. Dishes remained containers until the 20th century, when technology gave us the dish-shaped aerial [M20th] and the modern satellite dish [1980s]. The sense ‘a good-looking person’ took off in the USA in the early 20th century, although Shakespeare used the term in a somewhat similar way. Dish the dirt, ‘to reveal scandal or gossip’, is also early 20th century.