Definition of "desk"

desk

/dɛsk/

noun
plural desks
1. A table, frame, or case, in past centuries usually with a sloping top but now usually with a flat top, for the use of writers and readers. It often has a drawer or repository underneath.
  Quotations
  Here, in the transept and choir, where the service was being held, one was conscious every moment of an increasing brightness; colours glowing vividly beneath the circular chandeliers, and the rows of small lights on the choristers' desks flashed and sparkled in front of the boys' faces, deep linen collars, and red neckbands.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
2. A reading table or lectern to support the book from which the liturgical service is read, differing from the pulpit from which the sermon is preached; also (especially in the United States), a pulpit. Hence, used symbolically for the clerical profession.
3. A department tasked with a particular topic or focus in certain types of businesses, such as newspapers and financial trading firms.
4. Short for mixing desk.
  Quotations
  Each aux out is connected to an effects unit and the signal is then returned into the desk.
  2009, Rick Snoman, Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys and Techniques, page 69
5. A station for a string player in an orchestra, consisting of a chair and a music stand, or a row of such stations.
  Quotations
  […] at best a competent viola player occupies a first desk, so that he may play the occasional solos for that instrument; but I have even seen this function performed by the leaderof the first violins.
  2003, Sheila M. Nelson, The Violin and Viola: History, Structure, Techniques‎, page 158
  First desk: Lalance, chevalier de, composer; Meslay, Masson de, President of the exchequer, amateur; Blasius, Pierre, the elder, professor of music; Second desk: […]
  2006, Gabriel Banat, The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow‎, page 270
  Lori performed for years with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski as a first-desk violinist. (She says that Stokowski was not a Russian but an Englishman named Stokes. His Russian accent varied a lot.)
  2014, Reuben Hersh, Peter Lax, Mathematician‎, page 46
verb
third-person singular simple present desks, present participle desking, simple past and past participle desked
1. (transitive) To shut up, as in a desk; to treasure.
2. (transitive) To equip with a desk or desks.
  Quotations
  But also that the said Chapell be desked, and the windowes of our said Chapell be glased, with Stores, Ymagies, Armes, Bagies ami Cognossaunts, as is by us redily divised, and in picture delivered to the Priour of Saunt Bartilmews besid Smythfel, maistre of the works of our said Chapell;
  1775, Henry VII (King of England), The will of king Henry vii [ed. by T. Astle.]., page 6
  The teaching accommodation is to be as follows ;— Senior Mixed Department—Five rooms of equal area, four of which are each to be desked for forty scholars and one to be desked for thirty-two scholars
  1914, The Builder - Volume 106, page 528
  Each row of desked benches was stepped up a step from the other until the top row of desked benches seemed to hit its high ceiling.
  2001, Bonnie M Gulan, A Collection of Nodding Off Stories, page 64