Does anyone use the word 'parlor' or 'parlour' anymore?

Like does anyone ever actually call a room that?

The only time I use it is when I'm making up fake titles like: THE PARISHIONER and the PARLOR of PERFIDY

Yes. The house I grew up in had a parlour. (Well, technically, I think it had two living rooms. But we called the "the ballroom" and "the parlour" to distinguish them, according to their natures.)

A few weeks ago I visited a farm with attached ice-cream parlour - very tasty, it was. They had a viewing gallery in their milking parlour, too, and as we were there around the right time we went in to watch the cows being milked.

(they even have a website - www.roskillys.co.uk )

brooklynites refer to the "parlour floor" of a brownstone, i.e. the first floor where the ceilings are very high

xpost - yes, "ice cream parlours"!

The more I look at the word parlour, the less sense it makes, though.

word comes from the french obv - "parler" = "to talk" (cf. "parley" "parliament" "parlay" "parsley" etc)

Actually, come to think about it, that house had a third "living room" which my father took over as a home office. Then my mum took over The Parlour. I tried to take over the ballroom but it wasn't heated in the winter, due to its size. So we all ended up just sitting in the dining room because that's where we ended up putting the telly.

I wish we'd had a Drawing Room (from "withdrawing room") - our house in Herts had a Sitting Room and a Drawing Room. All very confusing!

still in widespread usage among spiders, flies.

I am thinking of the kinds of rooms there are.

Sitting room, living room, parlour, drawing room, den, rumpus room, family room, etc.

I wonder if I can find an architect around here to give me proper definitions of all of them.

mudroom, breezeway

How many people actually have a room decorated and used as a parlor these days? As opposed to a private living room, it is a presentable place to receive and talk (hence the word) to guests. Since we have lost the kind of formality and discernement which discriminates finely between family or close friends and aquaintances or mere neighbors with regard to access to our homes, they just don't much exist even in old homes since they've usually been transformed into a room for another purpose. Not only do I not have enough rooms to have a parlor but I wouldn't want one anyway. If I deign to invite you over, you can hang in the living room like me and everyone else.

what's a "lounge"?

speaking of words that are strange once you look at them

Our Parlour was the place where my mother used to talk to people from the parish (about spiritual matters). And where we took private phone calls. Therefore it was one of the few rooms in the older wings of the downstairs that was given back its door.

Actually, that's not true. My father's office had a door, but that was because the previous family used to use it as a spare downstairs bedroom.

"parsley"

o_O

bootroom, utility room, front room, best room, salon, drying room

How come no-one has an orgytorium anymore these days? I hate going to frolic at somebody's house knowing it's in the same room where they watch the news. Ewww.

Our next door neighbour, like many older residents of this city, has a front room which is only used for receiving guests. In her case that means I've never seen it in use.

My grandma does that, the front room is almost never used, she uses the dining room as a lounge.

It's weird how people have them and never use them. I remember very rarely going with my grandmother as a kid to someone's house where we would have tea or some refreshment in room with no soul whatsoever and where you were supposed to sit upright without your back touching the back of the chair and make tedious and pointless conversation until such time as you could leave amidst a final exchange of hypocritical niceties. I loathed those rooms.

Yes, but the biscuits were generally quite nice.

what's a "lounge"?

Living Room.

Also parlour games!

you misspelled 'parkour'

Yes, but the biscuits were generally quite nice.

Yeah, but you had to have one for fear, otherwise of looking an ingrate and dared not have more than two, for fear of looking a glutton.

I have never had a fear of looking like a glutton.

(In fact, I have a pathological fear of leaving anything on my plate, on account of starving children in Africa.)

will ye have a sitting room?

Now I'm imagining daintily raising my pinky as I pull my finger off the carb and do a huge bong hit in grandma's parlour.

Michael, "pearl" also derives from there, because oysters were once considered to create them by talking to the sea

Parsley

[Origin: bef. 1000; ME persely, b. OE petersilie and OF persil; both < LL *petrosilium, alter. of L petroselīnum < Gk petrosélīnon rock-parsley

Pearl

1258, from O.Fr. perle (13c.), M.L. perla (1244), of unknown origin. Perhaps from V.L. *pernula, dim. of L. perna in Sicily, "pearl," earlier "sea-mussel," lit. "ham," so called for the shape of the mollusk shells. Another theory connects it with the root of pear, also somehow based on shape. The usual L. word for "pearl" was margarita.

:(

it depresses me that you don't consider me funny enough to make those jokes

Not nearly as much as it depresses me that I took you seriously, Tracer. I'll go quaff some java stat.

How come no-one has an orgytorium anymore these days?

That has made my day...
Given the prevalence of fridges, does anyone still have a larder?

i am currently apartment hunting and the term "double parlor" shows up in a lot of listings for older buildings -- it generally refers to a large living space divided by an archway or proscenium

my current dwelling has a double parlor, also

Divided by a pocket door, elmo? Here, that's just called a one bedroom.

http://lookhererealestate.com/db1/00042/lookhererealestate.com/_uimages/IMG_0065.jpg

classic double parlor right there ^^

lol double parlor is hueg

Oh, that looks like so many apartments of friends. Sometimes I miss American architecture. It's all so SPACIOUS.

I love the "living room." I would always say, "this is the room we go in to live." Not once in 20 years has anyone found this funny.

THE PARISHIONER and the PARLOR of PERFIDY

lol

elmo that's really pretty

i used this word sometimes!

*use

Okay on a similar note what is PARQUET besides some bougey thing in The Borrowers?

i'm rocking two living rooms now (one for TV, the other for records/ conversing), both immediately off the foyer and not accessible directly from the kitchen. I guess I could use one as a formal dining room, but eating over the kitchen sink is working out just fine. I guess i could call one a "parlor", but i probably won't.

x-post parquet =

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/images/uploads/05.09.parquet.jpg

i love that

kind of intensely

yeah it's tight

also elmo's pic = niiiice

my boss uses the phrase "parlor psych" to refer to a specific brand of overly-ornate and whimsical british psychedelic music.

nothin wrong with parlor psych

parlour psych

I try to use every word I know, as often as possible. This tends to lead to my babbling a lot.

My parents had a parlour when they were together: my dad was a minister, so I think that's where the cocktail parties for the "ball and chain" club happened. It was a room that we were never allowed to go into, except to practice the piano.
It was just accepted that it was a room that wasn't for children. (Now they crawl around like crabs into sneaky corners!)
When my dad moved back to Scotland, the family home had a front parlour. For funerals? I don't know - it had an electic fireplace, and the middle room was coal, and as we were all nervous about energy it was freezing cold.
As a few years went by (I started smoking VERY young), the parlour in Scotland became the place where my Dad and I would smoke together.

My Mom, who is 74, still has sort of a formal living room/parlour. As does her sister. Wing-backed chairs, a polite couch with pillows arranged just so... you can FEEL the tension in the air when someone DARES to enter the parlour and sit down without a specific invitation. Horrors!
And yet my Mom's house is only slightly bigger than a trailer home. And she lives in a sort of dicey neighborhood.
I don't know whether I respect her preservation of a dignified past, or am annoyed by the fact that it is unwelcoming.

Does anyone speak parlari any more?

So that's where your brother first played the piano, Alison?

What about a 'Drawing Room', a 'Lounge' or a 'Salon'? I am uncertain as to how these differ from one another.

Yes, James Redd.
Do you know him?

Yes, a little bit. Haven't crossed paths with him in years though. I did see his old college buddies Sam and Chris recently at a wedding and exchanged emails with Sam last week.

Come to think of it, Sam and Chris were always talking about him, but I think I only met him once, when I had tendonitis and Sam told me to call him up and he put me in touch with his Alexander Technique teacher.

Alan had some really awful things to overcome with his hands - he basically had to learn how to play all over again, because the muscles in his hands were so overworked. he had to learn to play from his arms.

Well. I'm attempting to ilx mail you with an update, but I can also just give you a quick rundown. He graduated from Yale Divinity in 2007 and is the musical director for a church in Southport, CT.
He does a lot of chamber music with members of the BSO.

Sam and Chris are the Frasier guys?

We're all very proud of the Murchie mention.
Did we have this conversation in the sandbox a few years ago?

Yeah, I think so.

I am delighted to meet you!
Not sure how to tell Alan that I met Retrato Em Redd E Blecch without some sense of wonder on his part. Webmail me!

I also feel like I try to create parlors - or, more like I have this desire to name rooms as dining room, living room, other living room. It recently occurred to me that I can move my bed into the large room with all of the windows.
it's *funny* how we sort of go by the description of the apartments, and maybe our upbringing, to determinine how we live in rooms.

When I build my house it will be very funky. I'm in the process of redefining rooms. I'm excited to be in the big room. When I wake up, I want things to be super nice. Trees. mountains - my view.

Someday I want to have a piano.

Drawing room = withdrawing room, a more informal (compared to the parlour) family room.

I have no idea what a lounge or a salon would be.

What I really want is a *solar*. I don't think houses have had those in about 1000 years. Much the shame.