He graduated sofa cum bed. Top of his class.
The seller isn’t necessarily being weird, “sofa-cum-bed”/“sofa-come-bed”/“sofa-co-bed” is actually how people refer to it in some places.
https://www.urbanladder.com/blog/5-types-of-sofa-cum-bed-that-every-home-needs
I think it comes from the Latin for “with”. The same thing happens with some historical academic distinctions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_honors
summa cum laude (/ˈsuːmə/), meaning “with highest praise”, typically awarded to graduates in the top 1%, 2%, or 5% of their class, depending on the institution. Some institutions either do not award the summa cum laude distinction or award it only in extraordinary circumstances
I’ve never looked it up before but in my head it has always meant “which is also a” or “which has turned into a.” I guess I was off a little but it is a very rarely seen expression. Probably because of the cum-cum-jizz association.
It’s the Latin preposition cum (“with”), used in hyphenated compounds to describe something that’s two things at once. Examples:
- Kitchen-cum-dining room: a room that serves as both
- Bed-cum-sofa: a sofa that converts to a bed
- Secretary-cum-bodyguard: one person filling both roles
Similar to the Spanish “con”/“with” if it helps. Although we just call that sofá cama. So, sofa bed. No traces of VP Vance in between.
J. D. Vance was honored as sofa cum bed in college. They won’t let me add that to his Wikipedia for some reason.
