#810 Zarf

If someone were to have bet me five dollars yesterday that there was such a thing as a zarf I would have said no and lost the bet.
Paradoxically, it turns out I own one.
At the very least I would have thought the word zarf, if it existed, would be a comic book type of word, like bam and wham and pow.
Or perhaps a sound created when one’s sweaty thighs peel off a vinyl seat cushion on a hot day.
Or it was a word like scarf. Not the thing one wears sportily around one’s neck, the female equivalent of a tie, used to accessorize a drab outfit or give an old one new life.
But the process whereby one consumes food at a rapid and un-etiquette encumbered rate. As in scarfing one’s food. “Dude, I was scarfing down some Cheetos and nacho dip and I noticed your zarf.”
Or perhaps it had something to do with the purging urge. Also known as yarking. The Ptomaine twins—Ralph and Chuck. Clutching the thundermug. Bulemics buffet—the old Scarf and Barf.
Or, perhaps, the word used to describe barks from tiny dogs, as in, arf arf.
But no. All of these arf things, pedestrian in their nature, often involving the acts of digestion or its reverse, are the opposite of the elegance typified by a zarf.
For a zarf is, to quote the American Heritage dictionary, “a chalice-like holder for a hot coffee cup, usually made of ornamental metal.”
It comes from the Arabic word “zarf,” which means container. The one I have is a metal, filigreed framework with a tiny handle, which holds a small glass Turkish cup without a handle of its own.
I never knew it was a zarf.
But here’s a cool thing, the essence of a zarf derives from its ability to prevent a person from burning his fingers on a hot handleless coffee cup. So, by extension, that includes the cardboard sleeves they put over hot paper cups at Starbucks. This is going to be fun.
The next time the barista asks me if I want “room with that” I can say, “No, but I would like a zarf.”
America, ya gotta love it.