After reading a post today I noticed someone referred to their “front room”. It made me smile because that’s the term I grew up using. But I think most people use the term “living room”. Is this a generational thing? A mid-western term?
Which term do you use?
I grew up in west central Indiana. I grew up in a household that called it a ‘front room’.
I call it a ‘living room’. I still live in west central Indiana.
When I was growing up the words indicated 2 different rooms. My grandparents house was not large, but it had a “formal” dining room and a living room. The dining room was known as the front room because, oddly enough, it was in the front of the house. It was very rarely used at all. The living room was called such because that’s where the living folk spent most of their time, eating most meals, watching TV, reading, etc.
The dead folk we exiled to the crawl space.
Front room is common in Chicago, and it’s pronounced fronCHROOM.
This is what I was going to add. 
I grew up in Wisconsin, and we always called it a “living room.” My wife is a Chicagoan, and she calls it “frunchroom.”
South Georgia. Now that I think about it, I recall there being a distinction depending on the age of the house. If it was an old house, the ladies would say, “Take this out to the front room”, or they might even call it a “front parlor”. It would be said as 2 distinct words. I have no idea what this “frunchroom” is ya’ll are talking about. 
If it was a more modern, post-1950s rancher, the Living Room, with its’ resplendent picture window and possibly sunken floor, was the formal room that nobody ever used except on Christmas or when special company was over. You got in serious trouble for going in there. The Den, Family Room, or Rumpus Room was for everyday shenanigans. Somewhere around the 80s the sentiment about that sacred Living Room space changed and people said, fuck it, it’s stupid to have all this unused square footage when we can’t lock the kids out of the house all day anymore and they are under my ass! :mad: I’m gonna use this extra room, dammit!
I also read somewhere that the term Living Room was a “modern” idea that came along with modern architecture of the mid-20th century. It had something to do with a desire by then to shed the practice of what Victorians thought of as a Death Room, which was usually the front room or parlor where loved ones were laid out on cooling boards for viewing prior to the funeral. Oh, those crazy Victorians and their romantic ideas about death!
I call the front room in my home the “front room” because it’s in the front of the building. I also have a “middle room” between the bedroom (where the bed is) and the front room. If I had put the bed in the middle room I’d call that the bedroom and the other room the “back room”.
As it happens, the front room also happens to be the living room in this residence, but I’ve lived other places where the front room and the living room were different rooms. I view “front room” as a spatial location descriptor and “living room” as a functional descriptor. The two can overlap, but don’t have to.
Another refugee from South Georgia. Yep, that’s how it was, all right, except our family attitude towards the sacred Living Room changed in the 70s. May have had something to do with the age of us, the kids, rather than the era, you think? Less worries about candy-sticky hands wiping themselves on the chair fabric or tracking in mud onto the pristine carpets.
Wow, that’s spot on my experience. I grew up in a 1950s split level with a “living room” that nobody ever used and we weren’t allowed to touch. My house now was built in the 20s and I instinctively started calling it a “front room,” because it’s the entire front of the house, and we also actually use it as a room and not a showpiece.
Your family really were a bunch of Rebels, weren’t they? All trend-setting ahead of the curve, lol!
Yeah, I don’t recall anyone I knew letting the Living Room become everyday space until later.
If you went to friend’s house, it was an understood rule, STAY OUT OF THE LIVING ROOM!!
I don’t know about the age of the kids having anything to do with the shift, I know the same rules were in place for the generation ahead of me. When they were teens in the 50s and 60s, they were banished to other parts of the house so as to keep that Living Room pristine.
Same here. Parents, aunts, friends all from Chicago passed it on to the kids, though at some point we started calling it the living room. I think because the second house we lived in - the one where I grew up- was a little fancier and everybody spent their time in the “family room”. Our first house just had one room for gathering.
It’s a uniquely Chicago pronunciation of “front room.” I tried to find an example on YouTube, but failed. 
It appears that usage of the term for “living room” in Chicago comes, at least in part, from the layout of many houses in the Chicago area, particularly the “Chicago bungalow”, in which the living room is the front room of the house.
And woe unto you if you played Hide and Seek and hid in there!
Yes, I think Front Room is the older of the 2 terms. Even a shotgun house has a Front Room. And a Front Room, out of necessity might even be a bedroom. There used to be small tenant farm houses around that were still in decent enough shape that people lived in them (most are empty and rotting away to nothing now), and there very well may have been a bed in the Front Room, but it wasn’t a Living Room in that case, you would walk on through to wherever the hang out spot was, which was usually the kitchen or back porch.
I grew up in New Jersey. We had a family room and a living room–no front room. The living room was more formal; it’s where my parents entertained.
I’ve always called it the living room. When we lived on Cape Cod, my friend from Boston called it the “parlor.”
Of course, now we have the Great Room, which is usually not in the front nor is it a parlor nor a living room. More like a Rumpus Room? Give me the old ClubBasement anytime.
Great room usually includes the kitchen.
Never heard the term “front room”, but I’ve never lived in the midwest. Living room or parlor, but the latter sounds a bit archaic. You’d joke and use “parlor” if you wanted to sound like you were living i the 19th century.
You’ve been watching, “Fixer Upper,” too, haven’t you? Joanna is cute.
Parlor gets used here in Ningland. Surprised me when I moved here, at first I thought the word was being used with a touch of sarcastic pretension, but it’s just part of the local culture. And on top of that you might hear it pronounced as ‘pah-lah’.
My grandparents had a drawing room. My parents had a sitting room. We have a living room.
My parents had a settee and we have a sofa (though many of my generation have a couch).
