mall

[mawl, mal]

noun

1. 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.

2. a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.

3. Chiefly Upstate New York.,  a strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards, etc.

4. the game of pall-mall.

5. the mallet used in the game of pall-mall.

6. the place or alley where pall-mall was played.

mall

/ mɔːl, mæl /

noun

1. a shaded avenue, esp one that is open to the public

2. short for shopping mall

Word History and Origins

Origin of mall¹

1635–45; the Mall, a fashionable tree-lined promenade in 18th-century London, where originally the game pall-mall ( def. ) was played; mell ²

Word History and Origins

Origin of mall¹

C17: after The Mall, in St James's Park, London. See _pall-mall

Example Sentences

Homicide investigators responded to the 24000 block of Town Center Drive near the Valencia Town Center shopping mall around 9 p.m.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Bass beat Caruso by a wide margin in 2022 even though the shopping mall mogul outspent her by an enormous margin.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Migrants reportedly have been detained at Chicago-area construction sites, near a university building, along strip malls and outside schools.

Read more on Barron's

"I felt nothing when I first saw the news," said Liu Ming, a 48-year-old employee in a software company, outside a large Beijing shopping mall.

Read more on Barron's

When his parents would pick him up from the mall, they would roll their eyes and tell him he smelled like a Macy’s counter.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• market 
• plaza 
• shopping center 
• shopping mall