desk: [14] Desk, disc, dish, and dais – strange bedfellows semantically – form a little gang of words going back ultimately, via Latin discus, to Greek dískos ‘quoit’. Desk seems perhaps the least likely descendant of ‘quoit’, but it came about like this: Latin discus was used metaphorically, on the basis of its circular shape, for a ‘tray’ or ‘platter, dish’; and when such a tray was set on legs, it became a table. (German tisch ‘table’ comes directly from Vulgar Latin in this sense.) By the time English acquired it from medieval Latin it seems already to have developed the specialized meaning ‘table for writing or reading on’. => dais, disc, dish
mid-14c., from Medieval Latin desca "table to write on" (mid-13c.), from Latin discus "quoit, platter, dish," from Greek diskos (see disk (n.)). The Medieval Latin is perhaps via Italian desco. Used figuratively of office or clerical work since 1797; desk job is first attested 1965.
