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parquet

UK/ˈpɑːkeɪ/US/pɑːɹˈkeɪ/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Parquet is flooring made of small wooden blocks laid in patterns. Herringbone, most often, and it creaks in a particular way.

It was the standard floor of school halls, town halls and grand houses for a century, and a great deal of it was covered with carpet in the 1970s and rediscovered later, to everybody's delight. The blocks are laid in bitumen and lifting them is a miserable job. The word is French and the t is silent. Parquetry is the craft of making it.

Donar Reiskoffer · CC BY 3.0

Definitions of parquet

  1. 1nounparquetFlooring made of small wooden blocks arranged in a pattern.C2

    “They took up the carpet and found parquet underneath.”

Where it comes from

  1. French

    parquet

  2. English, today

    parquet

Borrowed from French parquet.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 23 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

parquet in the wild

  • The most popular parquet flooring pattern is herringbone.

    Parquet

  • The parquet is the office of the prosecution, in some countries, responsible for presenting legal cases at criminal trials against individuals or parties accused of breaking the law.

    Parquet (legal)

  • Les raboteurs de parquet (English title: The Floor Scrapers) is an oil painting by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte.

    Les raboteurs de parquet

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.