The most curious feature of the word sofa is its ubiquity, for it is to be found in all the Romance languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and has even been adopted into German, with the same spelling and meaning.
It is thus far from clear as to the immediate source of the word into English; it could as well have been from any of these sources.
What is clear is its origin, which is the Arabic soffah, “a raised and richly carpeted bench or platform upon which to recline.”
