Ottoman

How to spell ottoman

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ottoman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ottoman mean?

1. nounA low, upholstered seat or footstool, often with storage space inside.

Ottoman in a sentence

• She propped her feet on the leather ottoman after a long shift.

• We store spare blankets inside the hollow ottoman in the lounge.

Where does ottoman come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from the French ottomane, a term for a low, cushioned seat that the French associated with the furnishings of the Ottoman court. The name itself goes back to Osman I, the Turkish leader who founded the dynasty around 1300; his name is the Turkish form of the Arabic Uthman, a personal name meaning roughly 'baby bustard' or simply a common given name. Europeans turned the dynasty's name into the adjective 'Ottoman' for everything connected with that empire, and by the late 1700s the French were using ottomane for a backless, heavily padded divan in the supposed Eastern style. English borrowed the furniture sense around 1800, and over time it narrowed to the familiar padded footstool or storage stool we know today. The spelling trap lives in the middle: a single Eastern name produced a word with a doubled t and an unstressed '-man' ending that sounds like 'mun'.

How the word is built

• ottoman (from Ottomane, of the Ottoman Turks, named after Osman); the noun was simply adopted whole, with no separable prefix or suffix