• divan •
Pronunciation: di-væn, di-vahn, dai-væn • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A sofa, particularly one without a back, usually set with pillows, which also may be used for a bed. 2. (di-vahn; archaic) A council in Muslim countries or the chamber it meets in. 3. (di-vahn) A collection of poems, especially in Persian or Arabic. 4. A smoking room or tobacconist shop.
Notes: Today's word came from an exotic source but in some quarters in the US is used as the regular word for "sofa, couch". We apparently haven't decided yet how it is pronounced. It is a lexical orphan, except for the rarely used adjective divaned "furnished with a divan or divans".
In Play: 
Divans are supposed to be couches without backs or beds: "Aiken Hart couldn't take his eyes off the frail girl stretched out on the divan, her throat blazing with jewels." The only active sense now in Muslim countries are the third and fourth above: "The earliest poet in Azerbaijan was Izzeddin Hasanoglu, who composed a divan of Persian and Turkic lyric poems."
Word History: Today's Good Word took a long journey before it fell into English. It started out in Persian, where Arabic picked it up and passed it off to Turkish, whence English borrowed it. Along the way the meaning changed from "(privy) council" to "council room" to "the piece of furniture found in the halls of a council". In Persian devan meant "bundle of written sheets, small book, collected poetry". Persian is a PIE language, so the best guess is that its word came from Sumerian dub "tablet" + PIE wes-eno-"home, house", which emerged in Persian as vahanam "house". Wes- "to live, dwell, spend the night" we see in Sanskrit vasati "to sojourn, overnight", Latin Vesta "household goddess", and Irish sos "rest", (Now a gracious nod of gratitude to Tomasz Kowaltowski for seeing the interest in today's well-traveled Good Word and suggesting it.)
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