dish

/dɪʃ/

dish noun: a vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.

Image: anonymous, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

dish (countable and uncountable, plural dishes)

A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.
- She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges v:25
Synonyms:

plate
The contents of such a vessel.
- a dish of stew
Synonyms:

dishful, plate, plateful
(metonymically) A specific type of prepared food.
- a vegetable dish
- this dish is filling and easily made
(in plural) Tableware (including cutlery, etc, as well as crockery) that is to be or is being washed after being used to prepare, serve and eat a meal.
- It's your turn to wash the dishes.
A type of antenna with a similar shape to a plate or bowl.
- satellite dish
- radar dish
(dated, informal) Something that fits someone's tastes, interests, or abilities.
- Going to the club is not my dish.
- Literacy is not every man’s dish. A teacher trying to persuade Arab men in North Africa to let their wives learn to read so that they can write letters was pointedly asked by one husband: “To whom?”1965 November 19, “Illiteracy: The Uncomprehending 40%”, in Time, volume 86, number 21, page 67
Synonyms:

cup of tea, affinity, bag, bent, love, cup of coffee, cup of joe, fancy, jam, liking
(slang) A sexually attractive person.
- quite a dish
- Have you seen the new apothecary? I think her name is Sadie. What a dish!1993, Westwood Studios, Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, Virgin Games
Synonyms:

babe, fox
(dated) The state of being concave, like a dish, or the degree of such concavity.
- the dish of a wheel
A hollow place, as in a field.
- As I topped the ridge I missed my first shot at a sharptail that flushed from a grassy dish.1980, Nebraskaland
- He and Stratemeier raced across the flats and dropped into the canyon, climbed swiftly through it and came out at the topside trail , which went straight south through the timber until it dropped into a small grassy dish surrounded by rock peaks.1987 02, Brian Garfield, The Arizonans, Bantam, →ISBN
(slang) The home plate.
- He said, "I don't like your chances at the dish [home plate] tonight."2008, Paul Byrd, Free Byrd: The Power of a Liberated Life, page 4
- At the plate, Graham pounded the dish three times, just like Bubbles did whenever he was up, […]2009, Loren Long, Phil Bildner, Magic in the Outfield, page 40
(archaic) A trough in which ore is measured.
(archaic) That portion of the produce of a mine which is paid to the land owner or proprietor.
(slang, uncountable) Gossip.
- We've been a very lucky community: We've had GCN to collect our deep dish and write it up as political discourse. GCN is not just another clipboard of polite press releases. GCN is the sticky questions, the sweet moments, and the dirty stories that make up our lives.1989 December 24, Abe Rybeck, “Liberation Without Permission, Pleasure Without Apology”, in Gay Community News, volume 17, number 24, page 5

Verb

dish (third-person singular simple present dishes, present participle dishing, simple past and past participle dished)

(transitive) To put in a dish or dishes; serve, usually food.
(informal, slang) To gossip; to relay information about the personal situation of another.
(slang) To insult, speak ill of.
- In the car with you I heard Joe's voice ― complaining about how invisible black people still are to whites; praising artists we admire; dishing someone's bad taste; planning future adventures; […]1989 February 5, Jewelle Gomez, “Journey”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 29, page 9
(transitive) To make concave, or depress in the middle, like a dish.
- to dish a wheel by inclining the spokes
(archaic, slang, transitive) To frustrate; to beat; to outwit or defeat.
- Have the Tories "dished the Whigs"?1867, The British Controversialist and Literary Magazine, page 460

Noun (2) capitalized: DISH

DISH (uncountable)

(abbreviation) Abbreviation of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis.

Proper noun capitalized: DISH

DISH

A town in Denton County, Texas, United States.

Synonyms:

Clark

dish meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Pashto

dish in Hindi

vessel for holding/serving food: प्लेट pleṭ, तबक़ tabaq, तबक tabak, थाली thālī
specific type of food: खाना khānā, पकवान pakvān
type of antenna: डिश ḍiś

dish in Urdu

vessel for holding/serving food: قاب qāb, طَبَق tabaq, طَباق tabāq, تھالی thālī, بُشْقاب buśqāb
specific type of food: کھانا khānā
type of antenna: ڈِش ḍiś

dish in Bengali

vessel for holding/serving food: থালা thala

dish in Pashto

vessel for holding/serving food: بشقاب bošqāb, پشقاب pešqāb, پېشقاب pešqāb

More languagesFewer languages

dish in Tagalog: plato, pinggan, putahe
dish in Arabic: طَبَق ṭabaq, صَحْن ṣaḥn, طَعَام ṭaʕām
dish in Malay: pinggan, mangkuk, santapan, sajian
dish in Indonesian: piring, pinggan, masakan, parabola
dish in Thai: จาน jaan, อาหาร aa-hǎan
dish in Vietnamese: đĩa, món, món ăn, chảo
dish in Myanmar: ပန်းကန် pan:kan, အာဟာရ ahara., ပန်းကန်ပြား pan:kanpra:

Examples of dish in a sentence

Daylight revealed that the so-called summit was near the edge of a shallow, stony dish, which terminated abruptly in steep slopes, and actually offered poor fields of fire.2006 September 14, Richard Holmes, Martin Marix Evans, A Guide to Battles: Decisive Conflicts in History, OUP Oxford, →ISBN:
However, if the ball stays near the dish and you have a pitcher on the mound who isn't a space-case, you've got a good shot to get the runner out.2014, Conor Kelley, The Catcher's Handbook, page 87:

All 40 example sentences with dish

Synonyms of dish

18 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of dish

Forms of dish

Noun
plural	dishes
Verb
third-person singular present	dishes
present participle	dishing
past participle	dished
past	dished

Past tense of dish: dished

Plural of dish: dishes

Origin of dish

From Middle English dissh, disch, from Old English disċ (“plate; bowl; dish”), from Proto-West Germanic *disk (“table; dish”) (whence also Proto-Slavic *dъska, whence Bulgarian дъска́ (dăská), Polish deska, Russian доска́ (doská)), Russian чан (čan)) from Latin discus. Doublet of dais, desk, disc, discus, disk, and diskos. Cognates Cognate with Scots disch (“dish; plate”), Dutch dis (“table”), German Low German Disk, Disch (“table”), German Tisch (“table”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish disk (“dish; counter”), Icelandic diskur (“dish; plate”), Finnish tiski (“desk, counter; dish”). Compare the identical meaning expansion (vessel for food, then also content of such a vessel, then also specific type of food): Bulgarian блю́до (bljúdo), Russian блю́до (bljúdo). For the roundness aspect, compare Polish rondel (“pan, saucepan”) (< Latin rotundus (whence also English round)), Slovene krožnik < krog. Also compare typologically Proto-Slavic *misъka << Latin mēnsa; Ancient Greek πίναξ (pínax) (several meanings).

Originally known as Clark. The name was changed in November 2005 when the town accepted an offer to rename itself to DISH as part of a commercial agreement with the satellite television company Dish Network.

Words formed from dish

Words that rhyme with dish

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dish

What does dish mean?: Dish means a vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.
What is dish in Hindi?: Dish in Hindi is प्लेट (pleṭ), तबक़ (tabaq), तबक (tabak). See Dish meaning in Hindi.
How do you use dish in a sentence?: Daylight revealed that the so-called summit was near the edge of a shallow, stony dish, which terminated abruptly in steep slopes, and actually offered poor fields of fire.
What part of speech is dish?: Dish can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dish?: Dish is pronounced /dɪʃ/.
What is the plural of dish?: The plural of dish is dishes.

Words near dish in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: dish (page history and authors); DISH (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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

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