Par"lor (?), n. [OE. parlour, parlur, F. parloir, LL. parlatorium. See Parley.] [Written also parlour.]
A room for business or social conversation, for the reception of guests, etc.
Specifically: (a)
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
.
Piers Plowman. (b)
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.
(c)
Commonly, in the United States, a drawing-room, or the room where visitors are received and entertained.
⇒ "In England people who have a drawing-room no longer call it a parlor, as they called it of old and till recently."
Fitzed. Hall.
Parlor car. See Palace car, under Car.
© Webster 1913.