best parlour

plural best parlours · alternative best-parlour · alternative best parlor · alternative best-parlor

1. datedA parlour or drawing room that is furnished especially well and often reserved for entertaining guests.

   He furnished it beautiful, every room like a best parlor, — carpets and sofys and lace curt'ins, — there was nothing too good.

   1891, Laura E[lizabeth Howe] Richards, “The House in the Wood”, in Hildegarde's Holiday: A Sequel to Queen Hildegarde, Boston, M.A.: Estes and Lauriat Publishers, page 215

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   He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.

   1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave Two. The First of the Three Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 55

   For it was not by any means every farmhouse that had a best parlour at all, and none possessed one as pretty as that of Madame Marcel, the farmer's wife.

   1916, Mrs. [Mary Louisa] Molesworth, “Chapter I”, in Edmeé: a Tale of the French Revolution, Macmillan and Co., Limited, page 8

   The room was reminiscent of a seaside best parlour—red plush everywhere, and antimacassars and boxes made of shell, and innumerable mugs and lurid vases, and pots of artificial flowers of every conceivable colour which could possibly swear at the plush.

   1925, Stanley Scott, “Greater Love”, in Tales of Bohemia, Taverns, and the Underworld, London: Hurst and Blackett, page 226