parquet

Etymology

Borrowed from French parquet.

noun

1. A wooden floor made of parquetry.
   That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens. 1922, Michael Arlen, “1/1/3”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days
   The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, […]. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess
2. The part of a theatre between the orchestra and the parquet circle.
3. (historical) In some European countries, the branch of the administrative government that handles prosecutions.
4. (historical) In some European bourses or stock exchanges, the railed-in space within which the agents de change, or privileged brokers, conduct business; also, the business conducted by them, distinguished from the coulisse, or outside market.

verb

1. (transitive) To lay or fit such a floor.