parliamentary

UK/ˌpɑːləˈmɛnt(ə)ɹi/US/ˌpɑɹləˈmɛnt(ə)ɹi/

adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,514 of 15,258mostly written

Parliamentary means to do with the assembly that makes a country's laws. A parliamentary committee, parliamentary privilege, parliamentary language.

Parliamentary privilege lets a member say in the chamber what would be actionable outside it, which is a real and occasionally abused protection. Unparliamentary language is what the Speaker rules out, and the list of banned words is long and comic.

Definitions of parliamentary

1adjectiveparliamentaryTo do with the assembly that makes a country's laws.C1
“The bill finally passed after weeks of heated parliamentary debate.”

parliamentary is a quality.

Where it comes from

Middle English
parlement
English
parliament
English, today
parliamentary

Built from

parler · Old French — to speak

From parliament + -ary. parliament comes from Middle English parlement. 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”) (from Latin -mentum). Compare Medieval Latin parlamentum, parliamentum (“discussion, meeting; council or court summoned by the monarch”), Italian parlamento and Sicilian parramentu.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

parliamentary in the wild

During the early modern period, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain established the primacy of parliamentary sovereignty, through which the rule of law could be enforced.
Parliament
Many other modern concepts of parliamentary government developed in the Kingdom of Great Britain and were later exported to other countries around the world.
Parliament
The Westminster system, or Westminster model, is a type of parliamentary government found in, and elsewhere derived from, the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Westminster system
Hansard is the transcripts of parliamentary debates in the United Kingdom, Australia and other Commonwealth countries.
Hansard
Enforcement of the prohibition effectively ended in 1771 following a dispute over attempts to arrest newspaper printers who had published parliamentary debates.
Hansard

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the parler family

parliament parley

parliamentary — used about once every 13,896 pages · #12,514 · point at the bar for the others

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