Word.ws English Dictionary

parlay

Syllables: par·lay/ˈpɑːleɪ//ˈpɑɹˌleɪ/

parlay verb: to carry forward the stake and winnings from a bet on to a subsequent wager or series of wagers. Also the alternative spelling of parley.

Verb

parlay (third-person singular simple present parlays, present participle parlaying, simple past and past participle parlayed)

  1. (ambitransitive) To carry forward the stake and winnings from a bet on to a subsequent wager or series of wagers.
  2. (broadly, transitive) To increase (an asset, money, etc.) by gambling or investing in a daring manner.
    • Shall we parlay the value of our products?
  3. (broadly, transitive, generally) To convert (a situation, thing, etc.) into something better.
    • They believe that if [Roy] Harris can maintain his standing among the leading heavyweights, they can parlay this rating with Texas enthusiasm and oil money into enticing Floyd Patterson into coming down and defending his heavyweight title against Roy.1957 October 5, W[ilfred] C[harles] Heinz, “Battler from the Backwoods”, in Ben Hibbs, editor, The Saturday Evening Post, volume 230, number 14, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company...
    • K[avalam] M[adhava] Panikkar's concept of Indian Ocean regional security, the Indian-inspired Colombo Plan, [Jawaharlal] Nehru's architectonic role in the creation of the Nasser–Nehru–Tito neutralist axis and the Bandung gambit of legitimizing China's entry into the constraints of the comity of...1968, Wayne Wilcox, “China’s Strategic Alternatives in South Asia”, in Tang Tsou, editor, China’s Policies in Asia and America’s Alternatives (China in Crisis; 2), Chicago, Ill.; London: University...

Noun

parlay (plural parlays)

  1. A bet or series of bets where the stake and winnings are cumulatively carried forward; an accumulator.
    • GARNETT. (Sharply.) Would someone mind telling a visitor the details of this Operation Snitch? / DENNIS. Kind of a three-horse-parlay, Cliff: Posenleben, Schweinhafen … (Eyes Prescott and Jenks.) And one other.1947, William Wister Haines, Command Decision: Play in Three Acts, acting edition, New York, N.Y.: Dramatists Play Service, published 1974, →OCLC, act I, page 17
    • They heard the placing of bets of $1, $2 and $3 and $5 "round robin parlays" on horses with names such as Ham Bone, Little Colleen, Miss Ellaneous, Fighting Thru, Papa Charlie, Dandy Foot, William Tell, Knot Hole, Betsy Marie, Poocha and Under the Rug.1955 March 14, Michael Musmanno, Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, “Appendix: Dissenting Opinion of Musmanno, J., of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania”, in In the Supreme Court of the United...

Also used as

parlay is also the alternative spelling of parley.

Examples of parlay in a sentence

  • [Oliver] Stone's vision, to decode the top secret message hidden in the CIA archives, parlays conspiracy theory onto screen memory, and as he clearly hopes, into history.1994, Elizabeth A. Fay, “Romancing the Heroine, Reading the Self: Same Difference”, in Donaldo Macedo, editor, Eminent Rhetoric: Language...
  • Victoria's Secret, the American retailer that once parlayed a “sex sells” strategy into a $7bn-revenue-empire of underwear, is heading back to TV screens.2023 September 30, Chantal Fernandez, “Changing the formula”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN...
  • Actually, any time you figure the probability that all of a number of events (each with its own separate probability) will occur you are figuring a parlay.2005 March, David Sklansky, “Mathematics of Parlays”, in Getting the Best of It, Las Vegas, Nev.: Two Plus Two Publishing, →ISBN, part 1...

All 12 example sentences with parlay

Forms of parlay

Verb
third-person singular presentparlays
present participleparlaying
past participleparlayed
pastparlayed
alternative formparley
Noun
pluralparlays

Past tense of parlay: parlayed

Origin of parlay

The verb is derived from paroli (“cumulative bet in card games”), possibly modified under the influence of French parler (“to speak, talk”). Paroli is derived from French paroli (“double stake”), from Italian paroli, plural of parolo (first-person singular present indicative of parare (“to protect or shield (from); to prepare”), from Latin parāre, present active infinitive of parō (“to arrange, prepare; to furnish, provide”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to go through; to carry forth, fare”)) + Italian -lo (suffix meaning ‘it; this or that thing’). The noun is derived from the verb.

Questions about parlay

What does parlay mean?
Parlay means to carry forward the stake and winnings from a bet on to a subsequent wager or series of wagers.
How do you use parlay in a sentence?
[Oliver] Stone's vision, to decode the top secret message hidden in the CIA archives, parlays conspiracy theory onto screen memory, and as he clearly hopes, into history.
What part of speech is parlay?
Parlay can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce parlay?
Parlay is pronounced /ˈpɑːleɪ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of parlay?
The past tense of parlay is parlayed.

Words near parlay in the dictionary

  1. parlatic
  2. Parlato
  3. parlatories
  4. parlatory
  5. Parlatos
  6. parlay
  7. parlayed
  8. parlaying
  9. parlays
  10. parle
  11. parled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parlay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-parlay.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-parlay.wav.

Cite this entry: “parlay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/parlay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.