Other forms: carafes
A carafe is the open-topped glass jug that comes to your table with wine or water in it. No lid, no cork, a wide neck and a heavy base, set down between the plates so people can pour for themselves.
On a menu a carafe is also a measure: order a half carafe of the house red and you get roughly half a bottle. Keep it apart from a decanter, which is the smarter object — stoppered, and used to let a good wine breathe. In a kitchen catalogue the glass jug sitting on a coffee machine's hotplate is a carafe too. It is not an everyday word; you meet it printed on a wine list rather than spoken across a kitchen.
1nouncarafeAn open-topped glass jug for serving wine or water at the table.
“The waiter left a carafe of tap water on the table.”
2nounquantityThe quantity of wine such a jug holds, ordered as a measure.
“They ordered a half carafe of the house red with lunch.”
3nounsitsThe glass jug that sits on a coffee machine.
“The carafe was still half full and going cold on the hotplate.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
carafe is a glass jug.
Carafe reached English in 1786 by a long southern route. English took it from French carafe, French from Italian caraffa, and Italian most likely from Arabic ghurfa, "cup or dipper", from gharafa, "to ladle". The same Arabic word travelled another way and came out as carboy, the big glass bottle.
Arabic
غُرْفَة — cup or dipper
Italian
caraffa
French
carafe
English, today
carafe
Built from
First attested 1786, from French carafe, from Italian caraffa, probably from Arabic غُرْفَة (“cup or dipper”), from غَرَفَ (“to ladle”). a doublet of carboy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA