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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sofa.

A raised area of a building's floor, usually covered with carpeting, used for sitting.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsəʊ̯fə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɵʊ̯fə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsoʊ̯fə/General-American/ˈsɔʊ̯fə/General-American
  1. A raised area of a building's floor, usually covered with carpeting, used for sitting.

    East · Middle · archaic
  2. An upholstered seat with a raised back and one or two raised ends, long enough to comfortably accommodate two or more people.

    He bought a big sofa two days before his relatives arrived.
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/ˈsəʊ̯fə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɵʊ̯fə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsoʊ̯fə/General-American/ˈsɔʊ̯fə/General-American
  1. To furnish with one or more sofas.

  2. To seat or lay down on a sofa.

Where this word comes from

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.

noun
  1. A slave soldier who served in the army of the Mali Empire.

    historical
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.