PARLOR

A room for business or social conversation, for the reception of guests, etc. Specifically:

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.

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.

Commonly, in the United States, a drawing-room, or the room where visitors are received and entertained.