parlor

Webster's Dictionary (GCIDE)

1.A room for business or social conversation, for the reception of guests, etc. Specifically: (a) The apartment in a monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from without. --Piers Plowman. (b) In large private houses, a sitting room for the family and for familiar guests, -- a room for less formal uses than the drawing-room. Esp., in modern times, the dining room of a house having few apartments, as a London house, where the dining parlor is usually on the ground floor. (c) Commonly, in the United States, a drawing-room, or the room where visitors are received and entertained; a room in a private house where people can sit and talk and relax, not usually the same as the dining room. [1913 Webster +PJC]

Note: "In England people who have a drawing-room no longer call it a parlor, as they called it of old and till recently." --Fitzed. Hall. [1913 Webster]

2.A room in an inn or club where visitors can be received. [WordNet 1.5]

Parlor car. See Palace car, under Car. [1913 Webster]