A parked domain name is one which is taken, but it's not associated with any other service - web or e-mail hosting. In other words, this kind of domain name will not load any real content when you type it inside an Internet browser, but no one can take it as you've already registered it and you are its owner. The advantage of getting a domain and parking it afterwards is the fact that you will be able to keep it and not stress that somebody else may register it meanwhile if, for instance, the site for it is not ready yet. You can create a short-term Under Construction webpage for a parked domain address while you are working on your web site, or forward it to another web address - temporarily or permanently. The latter option can be used if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you obtain domain.net and domain.org, so that you can protect a brand name or a trademark. In this situation, the .net and .org domain addresses can be parked and forwarded to the .com as you don't need individual sites for them.