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.

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