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"In the 1950s, male college students served in the military but couldn't vote, and colleges imposed parietal rules, which kept young men out of women's dorms." — Harrisburg Daily Register (Illinois), March 27, 2012

"[Tuatara] also have a pronounced parietal eye, a light-sensitive pineal gland on the top of the skull. This white patch of skin called its 'third eye' slowly disappears as they mature." — From an article by Ray Lilley in The Associated Press, October 31, 2008

Fifteenth-century scientists first used "parietal" (from Latin "paries," meaning "wall of a cavity or hollow organ") to describe a pair of bones of the roof of the skull between the frontal and posterior bone. Later, "parietal" was also applied to structures connected to or found in the same general area as these bones; the parietal lobe, for example, is the middle division of each hemisphere of the brain. In the 19th century, botanists adopted "parietal" as a word for ovules and placentas attached to the walls of plant ovaries. It was also in the 19th century that "parietal" began to be heard on college campuses, outside of the classroom; in 1837, Harvard College established the Parietal Committee to be in charge of "all offences against good order and decorum within the walls."

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