I was watching Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the weekend (yes, he is still going). He briefly mentioned the origin of the word sofa, and my ears pricked up. At the time I was lounging on a sofa, as no doubt were a significant number of people around the globe. Although they might call it a couch (thanks Yewande!) or even a settee.
Like the word sugar in my previous blog, sofa is so familiar it feels like it’s been part of the English language forever. But, also like the word sugar, it was borrowed from French (sofa), arriving in English in the early 1600s, and originally came from an Arabic word, ṣuffa – a long seat made of stone or brick. It may have become part of language in Europe via Turkish or as a result of the Moorish occupation of Iberia.
In the Middle East, sofa used to have a more architectural meaning, referring to a raised area of floor, usually covered with carpet, for sitting on.
The word couch goes back to Middle English (spoken after the Norman conquest in 1066 until the late 1400s), and again came from French, couche, from the verb for “to lie down”. The word couch is preferred to sofa in the US, as well as in Ireland, South Africa and Australia.
The word settee possibly comes from the word settle – a long bench with high backs and arms, from setl (“seat”) in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), spoken in Britain from around 400 to 1100.
Does that make settee a more authentic English word for our much loved piece of furniture than sofa?
Sources
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sofa
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sofa
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couch
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/settee
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/setl#Old_English
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Middle_English
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Old_English
That Word... where's it come from? 