Parlour

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Parlour (or parlor), from the French 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 Judg. 3:20 (the "summer parlour"), 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.

The "inner parlours" in 1 Chr. 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 Sam. 9:22 the Revised Version reads "guest chamber", a chamber at the high place specially used for sacrificial feasts.

In medieval Christian usage, the parlour was the room in a monastery or convent where the monks or nuns could receive a visitor. Because the order required silence much of the day from those living in it, that they could speak with these visitors was a distinguishing trait from other rooms.

It has been suggested that Warming House be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

In modern use, the parlour is a formal sitting room in a large house or mansion. In the late nineteenth century, the body of a member of the household who had recently deceased would be laid out in the parlour while funeral preparations were made. In more modest homes, the parlour has largely been replaced by the living room as a result of a twentieth-century effort by architects and builders to strip the parlour of its burial and mourning associations.

This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.