parliament
Meanings
noun
- A formal council summoned (especially by a monarch) to discuss important issues.
- In many countries, the legislative branch of government, a deliberative assembly or set of assemblies whose elected or appointed members meet to debate the major political issues of the day, make, amend, and repeal laws, authorize the executive branch of government to collect and spend money, and in some cases exercise judicial powers; a legislature.
- A particular assembly of the members of such a legislature, as convened for a specific purpose or period of time (commonly designated with an ordinal number – for example, first parliament or 12th parliament – or a descriptive adjective – for example, Long Parliament, Short Parliament and Rump Parliament).
- A gathering of birds, especially rooks or owls.
- Parliament cake, a type of gingerbread.
- a length of time for which a parliament is summoned, in modern times therefore the period between two consecutive elections.
name
- Alternative letter-case form of parliament, a specific parliament, particularly that of England or the United Kingdom.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English parlement, from Anglo-Norman parliament, parlement, parliment and Old French parlement (“discussion, meeting, negotiation; assembly, council”), from parler (“to speak”) + -ment (“-ment”, suffix forming nouns from verbs, usually indicating an action or state resulting from them) (from Latin -mentum). Compare Medieval Latin parlamentum, parliamentum (“discussion, meeting; council or court summoned by the monarch”), Italian parlamento and Sicilian parramentu.
Derived words
Translations
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.