My Web of Words - 8 - Mattress

This word was borrowed from Arabic due to a slight misunderstanding. The old French word was materas, taken from the Italian materasso, the same word that gave English 'mattress', German matratze, Polish materac and so on. All these words come originally from the Arabic matrah, derived from the verb taraha, which means 'to throw down'1.

I say a slight misunderstanding because matrah didn't originally denote a mattress or, for that matter, any piece of furniture at all, but rather a place...