mall
Americannoun
-
Also called shopping mall. a large retail complex containing a variety of stores and often restaurants and other business establishments housed in a series of connected or adjacent buildings or in a single large building.
-
a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.
-
Chiefly Upstate New York. a strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards, etc.
-
the game of pall-mall.
-
the mallet used in the game of pall-mall.
-
the place or alley where pall-mall was played.
noun
-
a shaded avenue, esp one that is open to the public
-
short for shopping mall
Etymology
Origin of mall
1635–45; the Mall, a fashionable tree-lined promenade in 18th-century London, where originally the game pall-mall ( def. ) was played; mell 2
Explanation
A mall is a large shopping center. If you want to spend your day buying clothes and eating in a food court, the mall is the place for you. Indoor malls are commonly several stories high, the different levels connected with escalators. There can be dozens or even hundreds of stores inside a mall, along with places to eat, drink, and rest, and often to watch movies, play video games, or even ride on a carousel. Outdoor malls are either organized like old-fashioned downtown areas, with trees and sidewalks, or just a row of shops with a large parking lot — also called a "strip mall."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He traveled to China and the U.S., met factory managers and mall operators.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 9, 2026
That may have been outré to a middle and high-schooler trying to be cool, but at some point post-college, the Chili Peppers became synonymous with sweaty fools passing out in strip mall parking lots.
From Salon • Apr. 4, 2026
“One day I was in the mall, and I was just genuinely nice to someone,” Wilkinson recalls of their initial introduction.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 3, 2026
Typically, the mall sees 250,000 visitors a day.
From Barron's • Mar. 27, 2026
“Remember the time we made those stuffed bears at Build-A-Bear Workshop and strutted them around the mall, so proud of ourselves?”
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
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.
