mall
Americannoun
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malls
plural
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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.
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a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.
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Chiefly Upstate New York. a strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards, etc.
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the game of pall-mall.
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the mallet used in the game of pall-mall.
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the place or alley where pall-mall was played.
noun
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a shaded avenue, esp one that is open to the public
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short for shopping mall
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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; see 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.
See Examples For:
Tyler Perry Studios boasts a replica of the White House, an airport terminal, two baseball fields, a strip mall, a residential neighborhood, and a golf course.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
Police cleared the event, held upstairs at the strip mall, and removed more than 100 attendees one by one, according to OnScene Media.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
This isn’t an argument for turning every anonymous strip mall back into a village of idiosyncratic mom-and-pop shops.
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026
Locals in Bangkok have transformed a flooded street in front of a shopping mall into a temporary floating market during flooding in the city.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
“No, I do not want some mall Santa asking me if I’ve been good this year. That’s just creepy,” she says.
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
"I'm super-obsessed with ube," university student Kym Trivino told AFP as she sipped an ube-matcha concoction at one of Manila's largest shopping malls.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
So, in the age of online shopping, what lies ahead for these medium-sized malls?
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
They’ve popped up in barns and on farms, in strip malls between an antique shop and an ax-throwing business and in churches, where lighting and sound for worship services is part of the curriculum.
From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2026
The band’s five members are embarking on a music tour performing at malls and will do meet-and-greets in Gap stores.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026
They had shopped at malls and visited friends and eaten in restaurants.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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.
