carafe It is fair to say that carafe starts in the European languages in the 14th century in Sicily -- in texts in Latin and Sicilian Italian -- spelled carraba, meaning a glass carafe, a glass vase for holding wine.[38] In 1499 it starts in northern Italian as caraffa meaning a carafe made of glass.[2] The word, as carraba and caraffa, looks unprecedented in terms of Latin or Greek. The most popular origin hypothesis is based upon Arabic غرفة gharfa, which in medieval Arabic meant a large spoon or ladle to scoop up water.