Meaning of deserve in English

deserve

verb [ T not continuous ]

/dɪˈzɝːv/ uk

/dɪˈzɜːv/

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to have earned or to be given something because of the way you have behaved or the qualities you have:

After all that hard work, you deserve a vacation.

deserve praise

deserve credit

deserve respect

deserve mention

deserve thanks Chris deserves our special thanks for all his efforts.

deserve punishment I hope they get the punishment they deserve.

[ + to infinitive ] They certainly deserved to win that game.

More examplesFewer examples

They deserve praise for all their hard work.
The proposals that you have put forward deserve serious consideration.
A business as poorly managed as that one doesn't deserve to succeed.
You should treat those remarks with the contempt that they deserve.
He was a good strong leader, she said, who deserved his party's unreserved support.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Deserving and deserved

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Idioms

someone deserves a medal

he/she deserves whatever/everything he/she gets

(Definition of deserve from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

deserve | Intermediate English

deserve

verb

/dɪˈzɜrv/

Add to word list Add to word list

to have earned something or be given something because of your actions or qualities:

[ T ] These charities deserve your support.

[ + to infinitive ] The American people deserve to know what went wrong.

[ T ] I hope those crooks get what they deserve (= receive a punishment that suits their crime).

(Definition of deserve from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of deserve

deserve

But these cans deserve a lot of love.

From Huffington Post

Did you have to overcome that tendency or did you find that the reputation is not deserved?

From NPR

First, "unborn children" deserve the same legal protection as born children.

From Slate Magazine

This human being, as we all do, has the unalienable right to life and deserves full protection under the law.

From Slate Magazine

The other deserves a pink slip and a scarlet letter, not an orange jumpsuit.

From NJ.com

It's a fundamental human rights issue and every person born deserves to not have their nerves cut out of them.

From TIME

You don't stand there and judge whether they deserve your hand or not!

From CNN

Your 18-month-old doesn't deserve a timeout for not knowing how to share; sharing is a learned skill, and she probably hasn't mastered it yet.

From Huffington Post

The problem is that systems have not been put into place to give 3yr degrees the recognition they deserve.

From TIME

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.

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