sofa
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An upholstered seat for more than one person.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sohfuhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsoʊfə
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
furniture
An upholstered seat for more than one person
furniture
An upholstered seat with a raised back and one or two raised ends, long enough to comfortably accommodate two or more people.
Acronym of Simulation Open Framework Architecture.
verb
To furnish with one or more sofas.
To seat or lay down on a sofa.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An upholstered seat for more than one person
Used this way, sofa is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use sofa
- “We bought a comfortable new sofa for the living room.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.