Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A room in a private home set apart for the entertainment of visitors.
- n. A small lounge or sitting room affording limited privacy, as at an inn or tavern.
- n. A room equipped and furnished for a special function or business: a tanning parlor.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Originally, a room set apart from the great hall for private conference and conversation; a withdrawing-room. It finally became the public room of a private house. See def. 3.
- n. An apartment in a convent, asylum, inn, hospital, hotel, boarding-school, or the like, in which the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with visitors.
- n. A room in a private house set apart for the conversational entertainment of guests; a reception-room; a drawing-room; also, in Great Britain, the common sitting-room or keeping-room of a family, as distinguished from a drawing-room intended for the reception of company. In the United States, where the word drawing-room is little used, parlor is the general term for the room used for the reception of guests.
- n. Vulgarly, any room more or less “elegantly” or showily furnished or fitted up, and devoted to some specific purpose: as, tonsorial parlors; a photographer's parlors; oyster parlors; misfit parlors.
Wiktionary
- n. A covered open-air patio.
- n. A room for lounging (especially for reading); a sitting-room; a drawing room.
- n. archaic The apartment in a monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from the outside.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A room for business or social conversation, for the reception of guests, etc.
- n. The apartment in a monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from without.
- n. In large private houses, a sitting room for the family and for familiar guests, -- a room for less formal uses than the drawing-room. Esp., in modern times, the dining room of a house having few apartments, as a London house, where the dining parlor is usually on the ground floor.
- n. Commonly, in the United States, a drawing-room, or the room where visitors are received and entertained; a room in a private house where people can sit and talk and relax, not usually the same as the dining room.
- n. A room in an inn or club where visitors can be received.
WordNet 3.0
- n. reception room in an inn or club where visitors can be received
- n. a room in a private house or establishment where people can sit and talk and relax
Etymologies
- Old English parlour, parlur, French parloir, Late Latin parlatorium. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English parlur, from Old French, from parler, to talk; see parley. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The term parlor generally denotes something other than massage within the industry.”
“You have one room which you call the parlor, supposed to be the best in the house, as to its location, its finish, its furniture, and its use.”
“This he had placed in what he called the parlor that morning, after dusting it carefully and putting a fresh pillow case on the scanty pillow where Amy's head had lain.”
“That spending a trillion dollars to move the revenues from Social Security into the betting parlor is a way to make it solvent?”
“John Boehner, who looks like he suffers from a perennial case of ulcers and excessive visits to a tanning parlor, is leading the charge of his pale-faced Republicans.”
“I've heard Hillary Clinton tell the story many times in speeches, and it rarely fails to bring a horrified gasp from the crowd: An uninsured and pregnant Ohio woman, working for minimum wage at a pizza parlor, is turned away from a hospital because she can't come up with $100.”
Oops. Another Clinton Story Turns Out To Be Not So True - Swampland - TIME.com
“Up the Yangtze – My favorite order at the Asian massage parlor is now a documentary about the devastating effects of the Three Gorges Dam in China (bought by Zeitgeist, scheduled for April release).”
“The Brighams ice cream parlor is now a health food shop … times they are a changing ….”
“The body, what is often referred to as parlor size, is smaller than most contemporary acoustic guitars.”
“If a parlor is open later than 11 pm or midnight, you can be reasonably sure that it offers more than just massages.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘parlor’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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old timey talk
Words or Sayings from the 1920's or whatever that no one really uses anymore (at least in that context).
scram, bearcat, heavens to betsy, dick, double-cross, ducky, gams, goofy, hooch, jalopy, john, joe and 174 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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Chennessy's Words
philistine, messianic, dyad, cult, bourgeois, blot, ploy, polyglot, lingua franca, cumbersome, lumber, petit-bourgeois and 446 more...
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GRE Words
abjure, unswear, state, rescission, indemnification, ab, reny, abnegate, vitiated, vitiate, adumbrated, abash and 378 more...
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P is for Porch Dog
My P Words
paddington, paddy wagon, paddy whack, paddywhack, paisano, pandemonium, pantaloon, pantaloons, paper tiger, papoose, parachute pants, parcel and 109 more...
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Words I have to learn
exasperate, felony, weld, fraud, worksheet, ransom, rehearse, preliminary, offshore, parole, infamous, sieve and 436 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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botello360's list
ruminate, steel, bifurcation, arrivederci, portage, tactile, ruminant, rift, anecdotage, diacritic, cud, hull and 399 more...
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Nana Words
My Nana, that is.
piazza, warsh, slim, listen here, dickens, chrisapoo, mine, young man, young lady, waste paper basket, behave, parlor and 15 more...
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2 BDRM W/ VU
Rooms in a house.
living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, den, rec room, garage, basement, attic, water closet, cellar and 29 more...
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elbow room
sundry chambers
mezzanine, loggia, rotunda, alcove, nave, breakfast nook, antechamber, priest hole, vestibule, cloakroom, boudoir, scullery and 37 more...
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Kerrily's Vomitrocious Words
honky tonk, ding-a-ling, awkward, chiffon, dowdy, dawdle, spleen, uvula, lettuce, kielbasa, frankfurter, hamburg and 16 more...
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Wendy's list
epaulette, motif, debacle, poignant, epiphany, exuberant, dubious, mitigate, somber, sullen, parlor
Tweets
Looking for tweets for parlor.

dailyword Jim and Artie spend a lot of time in this part of the train, either training, eating or hanging out. Oct 1, 2012
notanotherjazzpoet it better have happened in a shop, you see Feb 19, 2007