Mmm. I tend to use ‘sofa’ when referring to the butt ugly, sags in the middle, should have died with the 70’s kind of thing. 
‘Couch’ tends to get for anything else.
However, it’s always a ‘sofa sleeper’ or sometimes ‘sleeper sofa’ if it’s got a pull out mattress. Never a ‘couch sleeper’ or ‘sleeper couch’.
(I moved a lot when I was younger [sub]Heck, I still do…[/sub], so you could consider my ‘location’ to be pretty much the entire U.S. with the expection of the East coast.)
<< You say to-ma-to, I say to-mah-to. >>
Born in Canada, where I learned chesterfield, but since I’ve been in the states (after age 4), it’s been couch, always couch. Never sofa.
Jess, we must be related. My grammie used to call the couch a “davenport”, and always called her purse a “pocketbook”.
For my money, it’s a couch.
I can’t recall ever using any of the other terms anyone has mentioned, although I think they are all appropriate.
I use either couch or sofa - sofa if my speech impediment is acting up. My grandmother used to say “Davenport”, and I only learned about “Chesterfield” from reading Richard Adams.
Frank Zappa’s “Sofa #2”, which is sung in German (except for phrases like “chrome dinette” which allow the speaker to work up a good throatful of phlegm without having to even speak German) simply would not be the same if it were “Couch #2”. All the drama - all the BEAUTY of the song would be ruined…:rolleyes:
Couch. Soda. That is all.
My couch is a couch, except when it’s folded out. Then it’s a sofa-bed.
Here in Portland there is a street named Couch. For some odd reason, the locals insist it’s pronounced “cooch”. That’s one local custom I will not be adopting. If it’s spelled couch, it should be pronounced couch, dangit!
We use couch or sofa interchangeably. Love seat is the short one. Settee is where we sit aboard our boat.
My grandmother called hers a “teak” - but only the one in the “front room”. I’m guessing it referred to the wood, tho I don’t think it was made of teak.
It’s a couch because a sofa is something you’d have in…well, maybe those old mansions down in Newburyport(RI), since calling something that cost more than I make in a year a couch doesn’t sound right, but that’s the only exception I can think of.
I call it a couch. Who needs all those extra words.
Couch. The ones that pull out are hide-a-beds.
For the majority of them, I’m happy to use either word, but in my mind there are two types, and if a unit clearly fits into one type or the other, then there’s a specific word for it: if they tend towards being maybe a little longer, thin cushions, and with wooden arm rests (or with some of those characteristics), they are definitely couches; if they are shorter, but soft, richly padded, and luxurious, they’re definitely sofas.
To me, a couch is long enough to lie lengthways on if you need to. That’s not so important with a sofa.
I call 'em lounges too, if I’m feeling that way inclined. Sometimes I even call mine Dave.
By the way Canucks, isn’t a Chesterfield a specific style of cofa or souch? You guys use it as a generic term? Cool. Didn’t know that.
I used to call it a sofa, but now I usually say couch. Or “the sitting on thing”.
When my sister-in-law gave me her old rosewood sofa a few years ago, my (then) 3-year-old niece informed me that, “A sofa is a couch with accessories.”
(SIL said that the child was quoting a decorator friend of hers.)
I grew up in an era when that piece of furniture in the living room was a ‘chesterfield’ which I understand to be a mainly Canadian term for a sofa. A sofa (contempory term) usually has an upholstered back and arms. A couch is usually a piece of furniture on which you would sleep. The word couch used as a verb means ‘to recline or lie down’, even ‘to lie in ambush’. Obviously the furniture dealers have blended the terms when they refer to the ‘sofa bed’. Ultimately, I guess it depends on what your particular use for that piece of furniture happens to be. 
Well, I always celled it a sofa. After all, there isn’t a song about couches, is ther?
A couch and a sofa are two seperate concepts. Having trouble differentiating?
Look at the furniture in question–
Does it look like it is designed to have a nap on? It’s a couch.
Does it look more like the maker was thinking about folks perched on it, engaged in witty repartè? It’s a sofa.
Couchè or sophistry?
What I want to know is what the piece of mock-swedish warehouse crap in my front room is – it clearly doesn’t fit into either category – I think it’s more of a “rack” than anything.
It used to be a Poof.
Now, it’s a futon.
I agree with Larry Mudd.
Cartooniverse
I’ve always called it a sofa. Probably because in Spanish it’s a . . . sofa and that’s what my grandmother spoke 2/3rds of the time when she was speaking English. So I often say things like “turn the voice down on the T.V.” because in Spanish it’s “la voz” which translates to “the voice”. Not that I speak Spanish all that well.
Um, so. . . sofa.