parlor

plural parlors · alternative parlour

1. dated outside Mid-Atlantic USThe living room of a house, or a room for entertaining guests; a room for talking; a sitting-room or drawing room.

   So, after a spell, he decided to make the best of it and shoved us into the front parlor. 'Twas a dismal sort of place, with hair wreaths, and wax fruit, and tin lambrekins, and land knows what all.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: living room, sitting room, drawing room, lounge

2. archaicThe apartment in a monastery or nunnery where the residents are permitted to meet and converse with each other or with visitors from the outside.
3. datedA comfortable room in a public house.

   There had been a surprise party and some had entered his hotel parlour to get drink; before he was aware of it the accordion was being played in the room.

   1957 July 4, The Nepean Times, Penrith, NSW, page 2, column 2

   1 more example

   Immediately at hand was a small, mean public-house - one of those dingy establishments that seem to express, by their morbid and retiring appearance, a certain anxiety to escape the eye of the police - and into the parlour of this hostel Quin promptly led the way.

   1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 135

4. Southern USA covered open-air patio.
5. A shop or other business selling goods or services specified by context.

   tattoo parlor   pizza parlor   ice cream parlor

   1. PhilippinesabbreviationellipsisEllipsis of beauty parlor.
6. A shed used for milking cattle; a milking parlor.

alternative parlour

1. not comparableUsed in or appropriate for a parlor.

   Parlor painting.

2. figurativelynot comparableAdvocating something in a secluded place without actual involvement or action.

   Parlor socialism.