parlay
/ˈpɑɹˌleɪ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.57 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To carry forward the stake and winnings from a bet on to a subsequent wager or series of wagers.
verb
To increase (an asset, money, etc.) by gambling or investing in a daring manner.
Transitive verb
verb
Alternative spelling of parley (“to have a discussion, especially one between enemies”).
Intransitive verb
noun
A bet or series of bets where the stake and winnings are cumulatively carried forward; an accumulator.
Example Sentences
- "Shall we parlay the value of our products?"
- "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."
- "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 nations were efforts to parlay general Indian weakness into strength, its positions of regional strength into hegemony, and resultant regional hegemony into parity with China in a peace of peers."
- "Guatemala has remained a society organized to harness an impoverished, segmented rural labor force for the production of exports that a small landowning elite, in partnership with foreign commercial interests, parlays into profit in world markets."
- "[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."
- "[Petra] Epperlein and [Michael] Tucker focus on two featherweight hopefuls: Dustin Poirier, a formidable contender who's looking to parlay a history of schoolyard violence and street-fighting into a potential career, and Albert Stainback, a more thoughtful yet more erratic and undisciplined fighter whose chief gimmick is entering the ring wearing a hat like the one Malcolm McDowell wore in A Clockwork Orange."
Etymology
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.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɑɹˌleɪ/
- British English: /ˈpɑːleɪ/