I call it the scourge of the British Empire! Comfortable furniture is ruining the moral fibre of our young people. If the wooden bench was good enough for Alfred, it should be goog enough for us.
I grew up calling it a settee because my parents did but have gradually moved to saying sofa, probably because I hear that more now. I think I rarely say settee now, but hadn't realised till reading this.
Ditto on all counts! (Except that I'd realised it earlier, but only on account of a discussion on Elaine's journal a while ago.) The same is therefore presumably true for Pel too.
I knew you said settee as a child, of course, because of your fab 'Lord of the Dance' mondegreen :-)
I seem to recall that sofa/settee is a U/non-U distinction, but my vocab seems to be rather a mix of U and non-U terms, tending more towards 'U' though I believe that there is a fairly strong correlation between U and working-class terms historically with non-U=aspiring middle-class as the outlier (presumably the creator of the original lists didn't feel working-class to be worthy of consideration!). And anyway I am unsure how true the U/non-U distinction holds these days; I mean I am sure there are class/group/regional vocab markers but I don't know that they would be the same ones. I don't think 'sofa' can be a U marker anymore when every DFS advert uses it!
Child!Phina was very jealous of Jesus, since unlike her he was clearly allowed not only to jump on but to dance on the settee - in fact he proclaimed himself lord of the dance settee :-)
PS I have slight childhood traumas about using the 'wrong' word as defined by my peer-group (also having the 'wrong' accent) since the occasion at school I asked to go to the lavatory and got laughed at by not only the children but also the teacher :-( Of course, being me, I responded by firmly sticking to 'lavatory', and similar 'wrong' vocab; I still irrationally don't like the word 'toilet' though no longer use lavatory - I always call it 'loo' to my children even when they have picked up 'toilet' from school/nursery.
I use both sofa and settee, but in slightly different ways. I say "I need a new sofa" but once I have it I shall curl up on the settee. I wonder whether settee is more personal?
It tends to depend on the style of the furniture. I'd call a chaise a chaise, and a settle a settle (and a Chesterfield a Chesterfield). I tend to use sofa for our current two-seaters (though I understand that two-seaters are called 'loveseats' in the US), but used 'settee' for our old three-seater bench settee.
Yeah, we (American here) called our two-seater a "love seat" when there was also a three-seater in the room to distinguish it from. Otherwise, either's just a couch.
Really nice piece of furniture, but I'm not sure how conducive to, er, love it would be... :-)
My sitting room was too small for multiple couches, too, but when we added a family room we got the matching set. Plus ottoman-- is that term the same everywhere?
Er, no. That would be a footstool or a pouffe. I think of an ottoman as more of a bedroom piece of furniture.
OTOH note that (a)I am ancient and behind the times and (b) as more furniture is physically imported from the US the terms are beginning to come with them.
(pardon late reply) Indeed, in the UK an Ottoman is a hinged-lid upholstered box of a size large enough to sit on, rather than footstool-sized. Agreed with the more likely to be bedroom furniture point - it would be likely to be used as a blanket chest.
Family rooms are also not really a UK concept (I've only heard the term from American friends) again due to space constraints. I gather that on average UK houses are considerably smaller than the corresponding US houses (while being considerably more expensive :-( ) though of course this will vary depending on area, high-density cities not lending themselves to expansive housing either side of the pond.
I remember this one (along with "What's your favorite slang for 'drunk'?", "What do you call one of those foot-long sandwiches?", and "What's the generic term for drinks like Coke and Pepsi?") as a classic sorting question (here, answers vary by both region and date of birth). One sofa term not on your list but always on ours is "davenport."
This is the Davenport I meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davenport_(sofa) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davenport_(sofa)) (and I didn't realize it should be capitalized till I looked it up; apparently originally a brand name). My Pennsylvanian grandmother (born 1913 or so) always used the term for her sofa.
Had never heard of the desk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davenport_desk)! :-)
As a child we used to have a settee. It was like a settle only with more upholstery. A sofa I think of as more enclosed with padding from seat to floor.
Ah...my childhood settee, and my now settee were/are both wooden framed with large upholstered cushions at seat and back, not like most(UK) sofas.
Grandma called her fully-upholstered 3-piece-suite settee a settee though, although they weren't the squishy sort as people seem to often have now, either.
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wellinghall) wrote2011-05-16 07:34 am
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Seriously, I use settee or sofa almost interchangably. I'd use chaise longue for a chaise longue, but not for a sofa.
I think I get "settee" from my Mum; sofa seems more common these days.
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I knew you said settee as a child, of course, because of your fab 'Lord of the Dance' mondegreen :-)
I seem to recall that sofa/settee is a U/non-U distinction, but my vocab seems to be rather a mix of U and non-U terms, tending more towards 'U' though I believe that there is a fairly strong correlation between U and working-class terms historically with non-U=aspiring middle-class as the outlier (presumably the creator of the original lists didn't feel working-class to be worthy of consideration!). And anyway I am unsure how true the U/non-U distinction holds these days; I mean I am sure there are class/group/regional vocab markers but I don't know that they would be the same ones. I don't think 'sofa' can be a U marker anymore when every DFS advert uses it!
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Most British sitting rooms aren't large enough to have a three-seater and a two-seater so the question of distinguishing them doesn't arise.
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My sitting room was too small for multiple couches, too, but when we added a family room we got the matching set. Plus ottoman-- is that term the same everywhere?
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If, by ottoman, you mean a box with a hinged padded lid, then yes.
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OTOH note that (a)I am ancient and behind the times and (b) as more furniture is physically imported from the US the terms are beginning to come with them.
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Had never heard of the desk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davenport_desk)! :-)
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I may have to revise my mental image when American writers have their heroines ravished on the Davenport...
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Grandma called her fully-upholstered 3-piece-suite settee a settee though, although they weren't the squishy sort as people seem to often have now, either.
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