parlor game

noun

: a game suitable for playing indoors

Examples of parlor game in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Speculation about OpenAI’s next launch has become a Silicon Valley parlor game in recent weeks. Rachel Metz, Fortune, 13 May 2024 Within days, millions of TikTok videos using music from Universal artists went mute, and since then guessing which side would blink first has become a media-business parlor game. New York Times, 19 Apr. 2024 The parlor game of global South leadership also pulls focus from the real challenges facing small and medium-sized states. Comfort Ero, Foreign Affairs, 1 Apr. 2024 At its most petty and oversimplified, the fascism question became yet another way for the left to play one of its oldest parlor games: progressives accusing other progressives of being useful idiots for centrism. Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2024 Married guys gather at someone’s house to play a parlor game, drink beer and talk. Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2024 Instead of the dour, moralistic tales that were considered appropriate nursery fare at the time, Dodgson served up absurdist takes on Victorian England’s polite tea parties, its eccentric dons, its gossipy news stories, its popular poems, songs, dances, and parlor games. Hamish Bowles, Vogue, 28 Feb. 2024 In every generation, some novelist attempts to write one, to the chagrin of critics and scholars, who tend to find the concept at best a middlebrow parlor game and at worst exclusionary. Ryan Ruby, The New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2023 Projecting the future of economic growth is, unfortunately, more than a parlor game. Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 10 Oct. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'parlor game.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1854, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of parlor game was in 1854

Dictionary Entries Near parlor game

Cite this Entry

“Parlor game.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parlor%20game. Accessed 20 May. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!