Parlour - Usage History

Usage History

The first known use of the word to denote a room was in medieval Christian Europe, when it designated the two rooms in a monastery where clergy, constrained by vow or regulation from speaking otherwise in the cloister, were allowed to converse without disturbing their fellows. The "outer parlour" was the room where the monks or nuns conducted business with those outside the monastery. It was generally located in the west range of the buildings of the cloister, close to the main entrance. The "inner parlour" was located off the cloister next to the chapter house in the east range of the monastery and was used for necessary conversation between resident members.

It was the function of the "outer parlour" as the public antechamber of the monastery that elided into domestic architecture. In the early modern period homes became larger and concepts of privacy evolved as material prosperity was more widely shared. Rooms were increasingly set aside for the reception of guests and other visitors, screening them from the rest of the home. Although aristocratic homes might have state rooms, the frequent name for this reception room among the emerging middle classes was the "parlour."

In the English speaking world of the 18th and 19th century, achievement of a parlour room was a marker of social status - evidence that you had risen above the majority who lived in one or two rooms. As the parlour was the room in which the larger world encountered the private sphere of middle class life, the family's face to the world, it was invariably the best room (indeed it was often colloquially called just that) in the home. The parlour frequently displayed a family's best furnishings, works of art and other status symbols.

The parlour was used for receptions around formal family occasions such as weddings, births and funerals. Some tradespeople used the parlour of their houses (or later houses bought for business specifically) in the service of their businesses. Hence, funeral parlours (for those who wished to lay out their deceased in a grander style than their own home), beauty parlours, and the like.

In the 20th century, the widespread use of the telephone and (later) automobiles, the increasing casualness of society led to the decline of formal reception rooms in domestic architecture in English-speaking countries. The secondary functions of the parlour for entertaining and display were taken up by various kinds of sitting rooms, such (chiefly in North American usage) the living room, or (chiefly in British usage) the drawing room.

Despite its decline in domestic architecture, the term parlour continues to have an afterlife in many places as common nomenclature for certain categories of commercial enterprise. In addition to "funeral parlour," and "beauty parlour," (mentioned above) it is also use for tattoo parlour, "ice cream parlour", "pizza parlour", "billiard parlour," and "betting parlour." Other less common examples include "beer parlor", wine parlor, Spaghetti parlor, and coffee parlor. The dialect-specific usage of this term (i.e. as opposed to "ice cream shop" or "pizzeria") varies by region.

In dairy farming, the room in which milking takes place is called the milking parlour.