the.com/parlor
the room that put on its best face for guests, then quietly became a place to bury them.
means A room set aside for receiving and entertaining visitors, or by extension a commercial space offering a specific personal service (a beauty parlor, a funeral parlor).
from From the Old French parleor, 'a place for speaking,' built on parler, 'to talk' — itself from Late Latin parabolare, 'to tell parables or speak,' the same root that gives us 'parable' and 'parley.' It began as the room in a monastery where silent monks were permitted to talk, then drifted into the home as the talking-room where you met guests, and only later — once it had become the household's most formal, best-kept room — did funeral homes borrow the name (and the dignity) for laying out the dead.
- origin
- From French parler, meaning to speak.
- death duty
- Funeral parlors took the dead from family living rooms.
- rebrand
- Living room invented to escape the parlor's morbid reputation.
- sin spread
- Pool halls and tattoo shops borrowed the cozy name.
- ice cream
- Soda fountains made parlor mean sweet treats too.
parler social media platform — alternative social network launched 2018, gained 10 million users after 2020 election, temporarily shut down after january 6