A parked domain name is one which is taken, yet it is not associated with another service - web or email hosting. Essentially, this type of domain won't load any actual content when you type it in a browser, but no one else can take it as you've already registered it and you are its owner. The benefit of obtaining a domain and parking it afterwards is the fact that you’ll be able to keep it and not worry that somebody else could possibly register it in the meantime if, for example, the site for it is not ready yet. You could set a temporary Under Construction webpage for a parked domain while you are working on your web site, or direct it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be used if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you get domain.net and domain.org, so that you can protect a brand name or a trademark. In this case, the .net and .org domain names can be parked and directed to the .com since you don't need different sites for them.