An element that surrounds another element, which is referred to as its child element. For example, ParentChild/Child/Parent illustrates a parent element wrapping its child element.
In an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document, the element that contains another given element, which is called the child element.
The element containing the current element, with no intervening container elements.
An element that directly contains another element. The first element is said to be the parent of the second element.
the containing element in SGML terminology
(Application Developer's Guide - XML; search in this book)
An element that has one or more elements nested within it. Elements nested within a PARENT element are called CHILD elements.