A parliamentary inquiry is a question directed to the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly to obtain information on a matter of parliamentary law or the rules of the organization bearing on the business at hand. The primary purpose is to enable members to obtain the chair's guidance on parliamentary matters about which they are uncertain.
A parliamentary inquiry is sometimes used as a tactful alternative to a call for the orders of the day, or a point of order.
Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure notes, "It is not, however, the presiding officer's duty to answer general questions concerning parliamentary law." Per RONR, the chair is also not obligated to answer hypothetical questions. This motion is made by saying, "Mr. Chairman, I rise to a parliamentary inquiry."
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“For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)