What it means
کف (kaf) most commonly means the floor of a room or the sole of a foot, and it also means the bottom surface of any container or space. Linguistically this word is mixed in origin: the sense of “foam” or “froth” traces to a native Persian root, while the sense of “palm of the hand,” “sole of the foot,” and by extension “floor” came into Persian from Arabic كَفّ (kaff). In practice Iranians use kaf freely across all these meanings without any sense of it being a foreign word. A synonym for floor is زمین (zamin), which is more general and can mean ground or earth outdoors, while kaf is more specific to an indoor or contained bottom surface.
How to use it
- کف اتاق سرده. (kaf-e otagh sarde.) “The floor of the room is cold.”
- کف کفشم سوراخ شده. (kaf-e kafsh-am surakh shode.) “The sole of my shoe has a hole.”
- کف دستمو بریدم. (kaf-e dastamo bridam.) “I cut the palm of my hand.”
- کف ظرف رو بشور. (kaf-e zarf ro boshur.) “Wash the bottom of the pot.”
Cultural note
In traditional Persian homes, particularly in the south and in Yazd, the kaf of the main living room was often covered with hand-woven kilims or carpets laid directly on a packed-earth or plaster floor. Removing shoes before stepping onto the kaf is an everyday social norm throughout Iran, treating the floor of a home as a clean, almost sacred surface. The same word kaf appears in coffee-cup reading (فال قهوه, fal-e qahve), where the sediment settled at the kaf of the cup is read for fortune.