clear
TRANSPORT
a place, often with a counter (= a long flat narrow surface) especially in a hotel or airport, where you can get information or service:
We checked into the hotel at the front desk.
a check-in/information/reception desk
FINANCE
the part of an organization where a particular type of business is done:
a dealing/trading desk
COMMUNICATIONS
the department of a newspaper or broadcasting company which deals with a particular type of news:
the foreign/sports/city desk

Examples of desk

desk
The aura of opulence had gone: chaises-longues and chandeliers had given way to desks and cupboards.
They can be put on desks and serve as a necessary appliance with manipulability.
The room was free of obstacles such as pillars, desks and chairs, and along one wall were windows, which let in fresh air.
Defeated, stymied by the bar across this gate, they all give up and retreat to their desks.
Each bunk had a sliding door for privacy, which was also given in a series of cubicles that came equipped with writing desks.
Behind the glass, blond desks floated on a creamy carpet with magenta zigzags.
Pupils sit at desks using their lightweight wireless laptops to collect and format their lesson plans.
The flapdown tables are very different to their desks.
Individual desks for administration and reception staff are arranged around the perimeter of the space, some in close proximity to reception, some more removed.
Evidence for its popularity is that introductory textbooks and collections of original readings keep appearing on the desks of sociolinguistics students.
We'd been rehearsing this several times and were all sitting around at our desks in the classroom, and, of course, we started behaving like children because we were bored.
When the other desks join in, the first half/hexachord of the 12-note theme is heard for the last time, almost nostalg ically, as a gesture of farewell.
The area between the stalls was occupied by a series of desks, three rows on the right and a larger number on the left of the throne.
The drawback with this system is that even 8group desks normally have 16 or more input channels, of which only 2 are really needed for the stereo input.
How well do legislation about homelessness, codes of guidance, local authority policy about domestic violence reach through to the ever-more-pressured workers at the housing association desks?
See all examples of desk
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.