a game, popular in the 17th century, in which a ball of boxwood was struck with a mallet in an attempt to drive it through a raised iron ring at the end of a playing alley.
a playing alley on which this game was played.
a game in which a ball is driven by a mallet along an alley and through an iron ring
the alley itself
1560–70; < Middle French pallemaille < Italian pallamaglio, equivalent to palla ball (< Langobardic ) + maglio mallet (< Latin malleus ). See ball 1, mall, mell 2
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To-day your father the duke, Don Alfonso, and Messer Galeaz Visconti are playing at pall-mall against Messer Galeaz Sanseverino, Signor Girolamo Tuttavilla, and myself.
From Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 by Ady, Julia Mary Cartwright
But my answers were always, "Oh, nothing but Castlemain's new tantrum," or "The duke's defeat at pall-mall."
From The Touchstone of Fortune by Major, Charles
As the game of pall-mall went out of fashion the Mall became a promenade, and was the resort of the Court.
From Westminster The Fascination of London by Smith, A. Murray, Mrs.
If he played pall-mall she often watched him, and sometimes played herself.
From Memoirs and Historical Chronicles of the Courts of Europe Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici by Various
A loner who never married, Lowry retired as a rent collector from Pall Mall Property Co. on his 65th birthday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025
Soho House started in London in the mid-90s as an antidote to the upscale gentlemen's clubs that lined Pall Mall.
From BBC ● Jul. 19, 2025
We’d relax for a few hours in Pall Mall at Sgt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 13, 2023
The initial galleries have walls painted the heavy greens and reds of a Pall Mall gentlemen’s club.
From New York Times ● Apr. 7, 2022
The name Stead was well known in America because of Herbert’s more famous brother, William, the former editor of London’s Pall Mall Gazette and recent founder of The Review of Reviews.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
