Hassock is what you should say if you’re British and the queen’s name is still Victoria.
No it isn’t. The common term in Britain is footstool. A hassock in the UK is one of the little cushions they hang in church pews for you to kneel on.
I grew up in northern NY. We call them hassocks.
I was born in Wisconsin. It’s a hassock.
Footstool
MA here Ottoman. When the Ottoman empire is mentioned I always picture an endless see of footstools carrying pikes.
Where I come from we call everything you put your feet on whether it’s big or small, has exposed legs or not, a footstool. (downstate Illinois farm)
Fugly.
Seriously, judging from the many nationally distributed furniture catalogs my wife forces me to look at while she simutaneously watches HGTV, the term ottoman would be common for something like this.
In the UK, the only time I’ve heard the word hassock is to describe the little cushion you kneel on in church.
I’d call it a footstool. Another British term (now out of favour) for a footstool is “pouffe”.
Speaking of stools, I give stool samplesas wedding gifts when there is a marriage in the family.
We had 2 things for one to put their feet on when I was growing up. The big round upolstered thing was an ottoman. The red square thing with wooden legs was a footstool.
I checked ottoman because of the two options listed (besides other) that’s my preferred term. If there are major distinguishing features to separate hassocks and ottomans (ottomen?) and footstools and footrests, I don’t know them.
I might call that a “taboretka”, which is the Bulgarian word for that object, if only because it was weird to call it an ottoman when I lived in the former Ottoman Empire. (And it isn’t the distant past; people talk about the evils of the Ottomans and the Turkish Yoke all the time.)
So yeah, ottoman.
I settled for ottoman, though I generally think of ottomans as being a bit larger. My grandparents probably would have called it a hassock.
I think of a footstool as being similar, but much smaller. Something that one might place in front of a chair, meant to support only one set of feet.
I have heard Muslims insisting the thing was named “Ottoman” by Europeans in order to disrespect Muslims, as back then the Ottoman Empire was the chief representative of Islam in the world. Because to put your feet on something is considered the ultimate disrespect in the Muslim world. This was explained in the media in connection with the Iraqi guy throwing his shoes at Bush. Of course, the fact that this needed to be explained to the Western public shows that it was not widely known. Which casts doubt on the Ottoman footstool conspiracy theory: The Europeans who named it “Ottoman” probably didn’t even know it would be interpreted that way. (Unless it was a plot hatched by some wily Orientalist who knew what it meant.)
Yeah. I feel kind of…declasse? admitting that it would never occur to me to use ottoman and that I didn’t even know what a hassock was till five minutes ago. I would go with foot stool.
A hassock is a thing you kneel on in church (not to be confused with cassocks, Cossacks, tussocks or Trossachs). An ottoman is something you can keep things in, like a sort of upholstered chest (you can also have ottoman beds, where the whole mattress lifts up on hinges and there’s storage underneath). A pouffe is a tightly-stuffed, often round, item, usually fashioned from hide, with no legs (snigger).
The item in the picture is a large and rather unattractive footstool.
They are called Ottomans in my neck of the woods. The new trend is the Ottoman that can be used as a coffee table or has built in storage. I don’t like it as a coffee table because it looks to cushy to put a glass on.
My parents had a pair of “jumbo storage hassocks”, so I’ve heard of the term. But I’d still call it an ottoman. Or maybe a footstool, but it’s a little on the large side for that.
I call it a Cossack, and split the difference.