The item of furniture that is usually the centerpiece of a living room or family room or a lobby or waiting room goes by any one of many names, but they have useful distinctions in meaning. Here’s a rundown of sofa and its associated terms.
Sofa, ultimately from Arabic, originally denoted a raised carpeted floor, but it is now the primary term in American English for a long piece of furniture for seating. (A sectional sofa, often called simply a sectional, is formed from multiple pieces, two of which join at an angle so that the furniture can be placed in the corner of a room.) A settee—the relatively rare term stems from the Old English word setl—is a sofa, often with fewer cushions or none at all, with a back and (usually) arms.
Couch is also a verb with a seemingly unrelated meaning; originally, it referred to inlaying or overlaying gold, but it has also long had a sense of “put into words,” with the idea that a message is worded in such a way to obscure the truth or influence perception.
Canapé, adopted into English from French to refer to an elegantly styled sofa, derives from the Greek word for mosquito or gnat; it originally referred to a mosquito net. (The English word canopy is cognate, and canapé, referring to a type of appetizer, was inspired by the furniture term.) Squab, of Scandinavian origin, is an obscure synonym for couch that can also refer to a cushion.
The love seat, originally designed hundreds of years ago to accommodate one woman during an era when fashion dictated voluminous apparel, evolved into a piece of furniture that seated two people—often, a couple, hence the name. (It was also known as a courting chair.) A variation on the love seat is the tête-à-tête (the term, French for “head to head,” also refers to a private two-way conversation), which seats two people facing in opposite directions and separated by an S-shaped armrest.
Several other terms denote convertible sofas: A daybed is a bed designed to be used as a sofa, a sofa bed is a sofa that can be unfolded to form a bed, and a studio couch—the name derives from the use of studio to refer to a small one-room apartment, not an artist’s chamber—is a backless couch with a cot that can be pulled out from underneath it and fitted alongside the couch to form a double bed.
An ottoman, though not technically a sofa, is often an accessory to one or to a chair; it is a backless, armless seat on which one can sit or put up one’s feet. Originally, the name applied to a couch for reclining, a style inspired by habits observed in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century.
a long upholstered seat for more than one person, typically with a back and arms.
Very interesting. I did not know that love seats originally had a different, single-person, purpose. I was taught (wrongly, no doubt) that the difference between a couch or a sofa and a davenport was that the former was inside in the living or family room, while the latter was outside on the porch or patio. The difference between a couch and a sofa was probably the price tag, a sofa being a fancy couch. Folk etymology from the folks, of course. I did not know about the Davenport furniture company, either. Really enlightening. Folk etymology from the folks, of course.
I have to admit that chaise “lounge” is one of those beastly barbarisms I cannot be silent about. It’s right up there with the spelling “barbeque”.
FYI, very few people use “chesterfield” in Canada anymore. I do, but hardly anyone I know does.