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sofa

UK/ˈsəʊ̯fə/US/ˈsoʊ̯fə/
nounA2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,390 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: sofas

A sofa is the long soft seat where three people can sit together. Cushions, arms at both ends, and the remote lost down the side.

English has three words for it and they are a famous class marker in Britain, since sofa, settee and couch all mean the same object and people have opinions about which to use. Americans mostly say couch. A sofa bed folds out into a bed, and a sofa surfer is somebody with nowhere permanent to live. The plural is sofas, and the word came into English from Arabic.

Ildar Sagdejev (Specious) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of sofa

  1. 1nounsofaA long upholstered seat for more than one person.A2+

    “He fell asleep on the sofa.”

Also accepted in games: couch, settee

Where it comes from

  1. French

    sofa

  2. English, today

    sofa

Borrowed from French sofa. Borrowed from French sofa, ultimately from Arabic صُفَّة (“a long seat made of stone or brick, covered with rich carpets and cushions and used for sitting”). Cognate with arc צפא/syc ܨܦܬܐ (“mat, matting”). The word may have entered European languages via Muslim Iberia or through Turkish.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

sofa in the wild

  • A western-style futon differs from a sofa bed, although sofa beds using futon mattresses are common.

    Sofa bed

  • The false catshark or sofa shark (Pseudotriakis microdon) is a species of ground shark in the family Pseudotriakidae, and the sole member of its genus.

    False catshark

  • The area thus obtained is referred to as the sofa constant.

    Moving sofa problem

  • The exact value of the sofa constant is an open problem.

    Moving sofa problem

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.