Word.ws English Dictionary

Deseret

Syllables: De·se·ret/dɛz.əˈɹɛt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

archaic/dɛˈsiːɹɛt/

Deseret proper noun: a state, proposed in 1849 and never recognized, which would have included most of Utah and Nevada and parts of other states.

deseret: a state, proposed in 1849 and never recognized, which would have included most of Utah and Nevada...
Image: Theshibboleth Wpdms deseret, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Deseret

  1. (historical) A state, proposed in 1849 and never recognized, which would have included most of Utah and Nevada and parts of other states.
    • In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free and independent" government and erected the "State of Deseret," with Brigham Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed it and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation of mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general...1872, Mark Twain, “Appendix A”, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co.
  2. (poetic) The state of Utah itself, especially the Salt Lake Valley and environs.
    • Nearly 1,000 people attended tours of the 15,000-resident city, a dinner and a ceremony to commemorate Utah's Jan. 4 birthday, when the land of Deseret became an arm of the Union.1998 January 4, Jeffrey P. Haney, “Lehi takes center stage at Statehood Day events”, in Deseret News, Lehi, Utah: Deseret News Publishing Co.
  3. A script, invented in Utah, conceived of as a radical reform and replacement of the Latin script, intended for writing English phonetically. Example: the word seven in Deseret is 𐑅𐐯𐑂𐐮𐑌.

Forms of Deseret

alternative form𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻

Origin of Deseret

From the Book of Mormon, in which the word is said to mean honey bee in the language of the Jaredites.

Questions about Deseret

What does Deseret mean?
Deseret means a state, proposed in 1849 and never recognized, which would have included most of Utah and Nevada and parts of other states.
What part of speech is Deseret?
Deseret is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Deseret?
Deseret is pronounced /dɛz.əˈɹɛt/.

Words near Deseret in the dictionary

  1. desequestrated
  2. desequestrates
  3. desequestrating
  4. desequestration
  5. desequestrations
  6. Deseret
  7. deserialisation
  8. deserialisations
  9. deserialise
  10. deserialised
  11. deserialises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Deseret (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-Deseret.ogg.

Cite this entry: “Deseret.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deseret. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.