Category:Parlor

Par"lor, n. Etym: [oe. parlour, parlur, f. parloir, ll. parlatorium. See parley.] [written also parlour.]

Defn: 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.

Note: "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. Parior car. See palace car, under car.

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---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Parlor - (from the Fr. parler, "to speak") denotes an "audience chamber," but that is not the import of the Hebrew word so rendered. It corresponds to what the Turks call a kiosk, as in Judges 3:20 (the "summer parlor"), or as in the margin of the Revised Version ("the upper chamber of cooling"), a small room built on the roof of the house, with open windows to catch the breeze, and having a door communicating with the outside by which persons seeking an audience may be admitted. While Eglon was resting in such a parlor, Ehud, under pretense of having a message from God to him, was admitted into his presence, and murderously plunged his dagger into his body (Judges 3:21, Judges 3:22). The "inner parlors" in 1 Chronicles 28:11 were the small rooms or chambers which Solomon built all round two sides and one end of the temple (1 Kings 6:5), "side chambers;" or they may have been, as some think, the porch and the holy place. In 1 Samuel 9:22 the Revised Version reads "guest chamber," a chamber at the high place specially used for sacrificial feasts.