A parked domain name is one that's taken, but it is not connected to some other service - web or email hosting. In other words, such a domain won't load any actual content when you type it in a browser, but no one can take it as you've already registered it and you are its owner. The advantage of obtaining a domain name and parking it afterwards is that you can keep it and not worry that somebody else could possibly register it meanwhile if, for example, the site for it is not ready yet. You could create a temporary Under Construction page for a parked Internet domain while you are working on the web site, or direct it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be used when you have already registered domain.com, for example, and you obtain domain.net and domain.org, so as to protect a brand name or a trademark. In cases like this, the .net and .org domain names can be parked and directed to the .com as you don't need separate sites for them.