PARCHMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does parchment mean? 

• PARCHMENT (noun)
  The noun PARCHMENT has 2 senses:

1. a superior paper resembling sheepskin

2. skin of a sheep or goat prepared for writing on

  Familiarity information: PARCHMENT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PARCHMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A superior paper resembling sheepskin

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("parchment" is a kind of...):

paper (a material made of cellulose pulp derived mainly from wood or rags or certain grasses)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Skin of a sheep or goat prepared for writing on

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Synonyms:

lambskin; parchment; sheepskin

Hypernyms ("parchment" is a kind of...):

animal skin (the outer covering of an animal)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "parchment"):

vellum (fine parchment prepared from the skin of a young animal e.g. a calf or lamb)

 Context examples 

The only other known parchment copy is housed in the National Archives in Washington.

(Parchment Copy of Declaration of Independence Found in Small British Town, VOA)

Know then that for every parchment in England there are twenty in France.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His dull eyes were shining, his parchment face was quivering with excitement, and his strange musical call rang out above all the hubbub.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys' offices; and of the tea and toast, and children's songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan's famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray's Inn Hall.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with iron-grey hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and the air of an emperor—a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit behind his parchment face.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“I can see now that it is even so,” said John, examining the parchment again.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Boston Globe reports the Duke of Richmond is believed to have been the original owner of the parchment which the researchers dated to the 1780s.

(Parchment Copy of Declaration of Independence Found in Small British Town, VOA)

Mr. Micawber's affairs, although past their crisis, were very much involved by reason of a certain Deed, of which I used to hear a great deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great extent in Germany.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“Here, then, is something to try upon,” quoth the archer, pulling a square of parchment from the inside of his tunic.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)