CI5 hq

Trouble is, to me only the shops use 'sofa' ('Sofa Workshop', etc.), which suggests it is the more posh and aspirant term. Settee sounds more promising for the lads.
Thanks very much!

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I'm glad other families talk about these important matters. That's a really interesting and logical analysis - then you go and tell me you all differ on the same piece of furniture anyway!

I agree with sofa and bed, never heard of 'settee bed', only a 'sofa bed'. It all seems to make sense when you explain it!

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Oh, I love you, you've given me an excuse to quote Kate Fox, from one of my favourite books: Watching the English (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Hidden-Rules-Behaviour/dp/0340818867)... *g* She reckons:

"If an upholstered seat for two or more people is called a settee or a couch, they are no higher than middle-middle. It if is a sofa, they are upper-middle or above. There are exceptions to this rule, which is not quite as accurate a class indicator as "pardon". Some younger upper-middles, influenced by American films and televisions programmes, might say 'couch' - although they are unlikely to say 'settee', except as a joke or to annoy their class-anxious parents. If you like, you can amuse yourself by making predictions based on correlations with other class indicators such as those covered later in the chapter on Home Rules. For example: if the item in question is part of a brand new matching three-piece suite, which also matches the curtains, its owners are likely to call it a settee.

"And what do they call the room in which the settee/sofa is to be found...?"

*g*

I'm trying desperately to think of what my mates used to call them when I first got to Manchester, but I'm all blank. I'm a couch girl meself - clearly less than "middle-middle", though also raised a pesky colonial by old-fashioned Brit-based-ish parents, so... *vbg*

In my CI5-verse, Bodie might call it a "sofa", Doyle would probably go for "couch", or maybe "settee" if he was trying to impress people, but..?

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Thank you, I loved the quote, and like what I've seen of Kate Fox.

"And what do they call the room in which the settee/sofa is to be found...?"

That's a whole topic in itself, isn't it? I think the lads would say 'sitting room'. One word I have tried to expunge from my vocabulary is 'lounge' or 'lounge room', which I take to be Strine .

I tend to use 'couch' (or settee), and I'm beginning to think from all these erudite comments that 'couch' is yet another Americanism that had crept unnoticed into the Aussie vocabulary I grew up with.

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hagsrus.livejournal.com

In Blood Sports a sound during the bugging set-up is identified as "lounge curtains" (not by either of the Lads).

Just out of curiosity I did a text search of the CD in two quintessentially English writers of the general period.

HG uses "lounge" (in the private home sense, not the hotel context) several times. She uses "living room" and "sitting room" more often.

She uses both "sofa" and "settee", and "couch" a couple of times.

O Yardley uses "living room" and "sitting room", never "lounge".

She uses "settee" and "couch" occasionally, but "sofa" more often.

So you have good precedent for whatever you choose!

Personally I go for "living room" and "sofa" but that's just what my mum called them.

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Ooh, well-spotted with the lounge curtains, and well-researched with the fic!Interesting stuff!

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Well, my mum was Manx, and she absolutely hated me using "slang" (or swearwords like "blimey" *headdesk*) and she was the one who used both "couch" and "lounge" (though also "sitting room" - never "settee" though). Sounds like they were both in use in some parts of the UK as well as across the water. I thought lounge must be Strine too, cos I've not heard it used often here, but it sounds as though it is from what's said below - and it's canon! (Though we have real Americanisms like "hood" for "bonnet" in Pros too...) Then again, who's to say the lads didn't watch films and pick up words just like we do... *g*

According to the OED (concise), a couch is "1. Bed; thing one sleeps on. 2. Piece of furniture like sofa, but with half-back and head-end only..." And yet I've never heard anyone ever use it to mean a bed! *g*

Kate Fox went on to say:
"Settees are found in 'lounges' or 'living rooms', sofas in 'sitting rooms' or 'drawing rooms'... You may occasionally hear an upper-middle-class person say 'living room', although this is frowned upon, but only middle-middles and below say 'lounge'. This is a particularly useful word for spotting middle-middle social climbers trying to pass as upper-middle: they may have learnt not to say 'pardon' and 'toilet', but they are often not aware that 'lounge' is also a deadly sin."

*vbg* She's fab - tongue totally in cheek, but it's all researched!

I do love words like this..!

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Just to be annoying like that, a chesterfield. :-D

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Hee - you American, you... *vbg*

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Who me? :-D

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Yes!

That's what we've got, a 3-seater red leather chesterfield, and we LOVE it - it was a wedding present, and after 15 years, two children, several over-indulged cats and dogs, it's almost as good as new.

But how many chesterfields have you seen in CI5 flats?

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I just asked the font of all knowledge (my mum *g*) She said that it was always called a settee, and that 'anyone that called it a sofa was posh'.

Never grew up hearing it called couch myself, I must say. I'd have thought the word was more common or originated in France (se coucher), or America.

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Agh, just read that back to myself.

This bit 'I'd have thought the word was more common or originated in France (se coucher), or America.' - I actually meant to say:

I'd have thought the word originated in France (se coucher) and then was more commonly used in America.

That'll teach me not to preview before I post (she says, hitting post first anyway...)

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If you want to get really nerdy about it, "couch" is the much older term (which is why it's the word of common use in the US), coming from the late middle ages. "Sopha" or sofa comes from Arabic and didn't enter English until the 18th century.

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Hee - not nerdy at all, I love origins of words. I did actually know this - Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue (I think it's called) is a very good book on UK/US speech patterns and word journeys.

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French? That's interesting, like couchette I suppose? My parents were Scots, always called it a couch and you've made me think that maybe it was because at one time Scotland and France were quite close... And then there's the '3-piece' which included a couch and two armchairs.

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The french verb is 'to lie down' so perhaps that's where the word began - didn't think of couchette, but yes, that works, doesn't it?! And that is interesting about France and Scotland - makes a lot of sense. As squeeful said above, lots of words which sound very American now actually originated in Britain / Europe, travelled across with the steamers and then stayed popular parlance, where over here they fell out of favour. I find that rather fascinating - just as I find in old newspapers (17th / 18th century) that 's' was written as 'f' - makes it so hard to read! Bill Bryson really does explain things well in that book of his, I totally recommend it if you haven't already seen it of course!

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Oh, yes! I'd forgotten about the 's' and the 'f' which you sometimes see on copies of old documents. Talking of the origin of words, the other day I heard on the radio that 'thug' was originally an Indian (Sanskrit) word and came from the term 'thuggee' which was the name given to armed bandits who used to mug and strangle people.....and then I thought I wonder if 'settee' is Indian too? It sounds slightly Indian, like rupee and thuggee. Hmmmm...I bet there are others.

Edited Date: 2009-01-07 04:05 pm (UTC)

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Oh that's interesting. Especially as the UK of the middle-ages more than likely used 'couch' first, if anything, and then when travel (and colonial travel) started, that could have brought back words like settee and sofa, just when words like couch exported over the sea! I'm just trying to think of any other words we use with the double 'ee' on the end (apart from squee!). Bee? Can't think of many, which makes me think its origins aren't common British, par se. (This is where someone points out there are a ton of words with that same flow, and I retreat to me usual comment of 'oh cool!')

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Just very quickly looked up the suffix 'ee' and the reference harped on about older-sourced words which derived from the french reflexive thingy i.e. when subject and object are the same or the subject is the 'initiator' of an action e.g. 'absentee' and 'escapee' and then there are loads of newer words where the the person is 'the one to whom something is done' like 'extraditee', but no mention of Sanskrit. I'd *like* to think some of those words come from India, but I dunno........

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(You're going to regret this...) Puttee and suttee (the first thing was worn by soldiers on their legs and the second is the thing Indian widows used to do when their husbands died and they're both words which come from Sanskrit but I don't think there are many more.

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Oh thanks for the extra info! (I'm answering both of your comments here *g*)
That is great (absentee etc, and the explanation - thank you for that!). Reading the comments below, I tend to agree the word may have come from 'settle'. But who knows?!

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Thanks for this (and your comment below). Sofa - Arabic, how interesting. Visions of lots of plump silk cushions.

It would be ironic then if 'settee' was a loan word from India like puttee, but I suspect it's derived from 'settle', since as far as I know the settle was a precursor to the modern sofa.

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I'm with your mum. 'Couch' seems to be American, then.

Derivation of 'couch', 'se coucher', very nice. Thank you.

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I think D&B would most likely refer to/sit on (or whatever ..... *g*) a couch. I also feel, though I'm open to correction, that it's the most wide-ranging of the terms you mention. A knotty problem, to be sure!

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Anything to delay actually posting some fic!

You're British (aren't you?) and you say 'couch', but others think couch is American. I'm confused. But what's new? :)

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It's not so much American, as used much more here. We didn't come up with it! It's an older term and while Britain moved on to using sofa and settee, much of the US stuck with couch. (Though depending on where in the country you are, it's a sofa, couch, chesterfield, or even davenport) "Couch" may have become more used through American media, but it never really left.

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I am indeed :). But I reckon it's just as UK-ish as it is US-ian, maybe depending on region. If Ian Dury can rhyme couch with Burnham-on-Crouch without batting an eye ... :D

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sc-fossil.livejournal.com

I don't know why I'm not crazy about settee. I usually use sofa. But couch is okay too. Furniture stories call them sofas. I always thought a settee was a smaller version, with wood arms and maybe a wood detail piece along the top of the back of the sofa. But what do I know? As long as they're happy on it, I'm good.

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You must be posh then. And you're quite right, it's the action, not the furniture that matters.

But I wouldn't want the spoil the PoV by having a Bodie or Doyle think jarring thoughts about 'the sofa', if the word would be out of character or anachronistic.

Anything to delay posting any fic, really.

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erushi.livejournal.com

Heee - I always have problems trying to decide what to call it in my fics! I use "sofa", because I'd never heard "settee" used growing up. Mind, I come from an ex-Colony where the locals were very much keen to emulate the "upper class-ness" of their ex-colonial masters, particularly where the use of English was concerned, which might explain the whole "sofa is for upper classes" thing I seem to observe in the comments above. *g* And I confess there're times I feel uncomfortable using "sofa", because it sort of breaks the flow, you know, with the -ah sound at the end, but I'm just not used to using "settee" though I imagie it might sound nicer, and I always wondered if "settee" actually referred to something specific (possibly of the shorter variety) as opposed to "sofa" which I'd always thought was all-encompassing...

I've always thought that "couch" was American. I don't recall ever using it in my formative language-learning years (i.e. primary school), to be honest. It was just something that snuck right in through other media. The teachers then were all "sofa".

Edited Date: 2009-01-06 11:41 pm (UTC)

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Hello again (waves).

Thanks for your thoughts. It seems that sofa is posh, and couch is American. that seems to leave settee. Which is an odd word, when you think about it, I wonder where it comes from.

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Most likely because it's a place where you settle. :-D

"I R NERD" should be tattooed across my forehead.

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erushi.livejournal.com

*waves back cheerily*

And hee, I should be thanking you for starting this discussion. Not only does it answer one of those burning vocabulary questions I have which I dare not voice, it's also rather entertaining reading everyone's answers!

I wonder where settee comes from too. Perhaps it's because you sort of settle on it? she suggests puzzedly. Then again, we have no idea how sofa came about too. The "se coucher" thing for couch does seem to make plenty of sense, though!

And just to add to the second lounge/sitting room/living room thing, I grew up calling it the living room. Sitting room's completely alien to me, and lounge... a lounge's a whole different sort of room to me!

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greengerbil.livejournal.com

In our family - which I *think* was very boringly middle-middle class, we used both 'sofa' and 'settee'. I tend to say 'sofa', my sister says 'settee', my mum says 'sofa', my dad says 'settee'. Thinking about it, I simply prefer the word 'sofa' because it's a nicer sound - there's no element of class associated with it in my mind. Erm...as far as I know, that is!

I've always thought 'couch' was American.

Oh - and 'lounge' is definitely not Australian! Unless my family has a secret Aussie past that we don't know about...*g* It's always been lounge with us, right back to my gran. I can never remember which way round it is, whether sitting room is working class and lounge is middle or vice versa. But both terms were in use in England in the seventies.

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Sorry for the delay in replying, have been tied up with my series 1 post and the dreaded work. Thanks for this. Further confirmation that 'couch' is mainly American. And 'sofa' is a nicer sounding word, I agree.

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draycevixen.livejournal.com

Just to confuse things further... My Mother's people (Gloucestershire) say couch and sofa, My dad's people who are Cockney and certainly NOT upperclass said sofa and my OH's people who have been American Southerners since colonial days use settee most of the time... except for the wooden backed ones that they occasionally call settles... although they'd recognize any of these terms to mean a squishy piece of furniture ~~the lads can curl up on together~~. *g*

Oh and my parents always had the living room and the front room (for entertaining guests)...

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mab-browne.livejournal.com

Jilly Cooper's book 'Class' suggests sofa to be posh and settee not. Don't ask this colonial girl about her accuracy. :-) Also, given that Bodie and Doyle were almost certainly not brought up 'posh', (in my personal canon at least) what would *they* say?

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mistry89.livejournal.com

Would call it a sofa or couch, but then I'm a Kiwi and my Mum's a Pom (and so were both Nana's and a Grandfather), so this could be an anomaly.
Ian Drury and The Blockheads, would it, seems, call it a couch (or was that just to rhyme with Tanner and Crouch) *g*

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Ooh, didn't see your answer till after posting mine just now - I thought of Ian Dury as evidence too! (Billericay Dickie, right? Burnham-on-Crouch. And Dickie is an Essex lad, but the lads are down south now .... ?)

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mistry89.livejournal.com

Yup *g*
And I have always found considerable amusement in the fact that my ex was born in Billericay. Although, as his mother once said "Sure, and if the cat had kittens in the oven, would they be buns? (Please imagine accent in there, they are Irish and were living in England 1960).

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lololol @ kittens in the oven!

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nakeisha.livejournal.com

I personally call it 'sofa' but in Pros fic I tend mostly (I think) to use 'settee' and in my American stories if I'm in an American's POV I mostly (but not always) use 'couch'.

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rosie55.livejournal.com

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, working class in the English Midlands (Doyle/Shaw country!), we had a front room and a back room (the front room was hardly used and kept for visitors and special occasions). We had a three piece suite in the front room which included a sofa.
In the back or living room, (not lounge, ever) we had a couch (which could be converted to a bed) though we might call it a settee sometimes.
My OH, a few years older, growing up in working class Gloucester says they also had a rarely used front room and a back or living room which had a settee. His grandmother had a couch in her kitchen which was hard black leatherette type stuff, a sort of day bed with an arm at only one end. With a dining table in front of it. And in her sitting room she had a sofa!
Now we have a sitting room which has a sofa in it!
I don't think that helps much, except to illustrate that the terms were used pretty interchangeably but that sofa seems to be pretty widely used now - and we are not posh!
What do I see Doyle lounging on in The Rack? A couch, I think or possibly a settee. But probably not a sofa!

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