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sofa

Pronunciation: /ˈsəʊ̯fə/

The English word “sofa” has 5 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A raised area of a building's floor, usually covered with carpeting, used for sitting.
  2. An upholstered seat with a raised back and one or two raised ends, long enough to comfortably accommodate two or more people.
  3. A slave soldier who served in the army of the Mali Empire.

verb

  1. To furnish with one or more sofas.
  2. To seat or lay down on a sofa.

Etymology

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

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.