Parlor might sound like an old-fashioned word to many of us…and I daresay we all think of the same thing when we hear it: a formal sort of living room in a Victorian house. Right?
That is certainly what the word has meant for much of its history, beginning as early as the 1500s. But before that, the word has a rather interesting history.
It traces its roots to the French word parler, which means “to speak.” If you’re like me, a lightbulb goes on in your head the second you make that connection. Because, of course! A parlor is a room where you sit and talk to people! The earliest use of the word for a room, however, was the French parleor, which was a courtroom or auditorium, back in Old French.
When it traveled across the Channel to join the English language around the year 1200, it was used to refer not to a room but to the window through which confessions were made in a church. By 1300, it was used to refer to an apartment in a monastery where the monks could have conversations with people from the outside.
By the late 1300s, parlor became a room in a house rather than having religious connotations, and at first it was for “a room off a main hall offering privacy.” Then by the early 1400s, it was used as “a public room of a private house” (so a receiving room). Then it shifted to be a sitting room for the family.
Fast-forward to the 1880s, and it was being used to refer to a showroom for a business, like an ice cream parlor.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.