Word.ws English Dictionary

parlor trick

parlor trick is the alternative spelling of parlour trick.

Meaning of parlour trick

Noun

parlour trick (plural parlour tricks)

  1. (figuratively) A piece of trickery or falsehood, especially a trivial one.
  2. Synonym of party trick (“a trick performed for entertainment”).
    • You may be nearly omnipotent—and I don't deny that your parlor tricks are very impressive—but morality? I don't see it.1992, René Echevarria, “True Q”, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6, episode 6, spoken by Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Steward)
    Synonyms:
    party trick

Forms of parlor trick

pluralparlor tricks

Questions about parlor trick

What is parlor trick the alternative spelling of?
Parlor trick is the alternative spelling of parlour trick.

Words near parlor trick in the dictionary

  1. parlor matches
  2. parlor palm
  3. parlor palms
  4. parlor pink
  5. parlor pinks
  6. parlor trick
  7. parlor tricks
  8. parlor-game
  9. parlor-games
  10. parlorish
  11. parlorista

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parlor trick (page history and authors); parlour trick (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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Cite this entry: “parlor trick.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/parlor_trick. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.