A parked Internet domain is one that's taken, however it's not connected to any other service - web or email hosting. Put simply, such a domain name will not open any real content if you type it in a web browser, but nobody 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 that you’ll be able to keep it and not worry that somebody else may register it in the meantime if, for example, the site for it is not ready yet. You could create a short-term Under Construction website page for a parked domain name while you are working on your website, or direct it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be employed if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you get domain.net and domain.org, in order to protect a brand name or a trademark. In this situation, the .net and .org domains can be parked and forwarded to the .com since you don't need separate sites for them.