wall
Americannoun
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walls
plural
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any of various permanent upright constructions having a length much greater than the thickness and presenting a continuous surface except where pierced by doors, windows, etc.: used for shelter, protection, or privacy, or to subdivide interior space, to support floors, roofs, or the like, to retain earth, to fence in an area, etc.
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Usually walls. a rampart raised for defensive purposes.
- Synonyms:
- bastion, barrier, bulwark, breastwork, battlement
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an immaterial or intangible barrier, obstruction, etc., suggesting a wall.
a wall of prejudice.
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a wall-like, enclosing part, thing, mass, etc..
a wall of fire;
a wall of troops.
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an embankment to prevent flooding, as a levee or sea wall.
- Synonyms:
- dike
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the outermost film or layer of structural material protecting, surrounding, and defining the physical limits of an object.
the wall of a blood cell.
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Soccer. a line of defenders standing shoulder to shoulder in an attempt to block a free kick with their bodies.
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Mining.
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the side of a level or drift.
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the overhanging or underlying side of a vein; a hanging wall or footwall.
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adjective
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of or relating to a wall.
wall space.
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growing against or on a wall.
wall plants;
wall cress.
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situated, placed, or installed in or on a wall.
wall oven;
a wall safe.
verb (used with object)
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walls,
present (3rd person singular)
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walled,
past participle, past
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walling
present participle
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to enclose, shut off, divide, protect, border, etc., with or as if with a wall (often followed by in oroff ).
to wall the yard; to wall in the play area;
He is walled in by lack of opportunity.
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to seal or fill (a doorway or other opening) with a wall.
to wall an unused entrance.
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to seal or entomb (something or someone) within a wall (usually followed byup ).
The workmen had walled up the cat quite by mistake.
- Synonyms:
- immure
idioms
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climb (the) walls, to become tense or frantic.
climbing the walls with boredom.
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up the wall, into an acutely frantic, frustrated, or irritated state.
The constant tension in the office is driving everyone up the wall.
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drive / push to the wall, to force into a desperate situation; humiliate or ruin completely.
Not content with merely winning the match, they used every opportunity to push the inferior team to the wall.
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off the wall,
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beyond the realm of acceptability or reasonableness.
The figure you quoted for doing the work is off the wall.
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markedly out of the ordinary; eccentric; bizarre.
Some of the clothes in the fashion show were too off the wall for the average customer.
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hit the wall, (of long-distance runners) to reach a point in a race, usually after 20 miles, when the body's fuels are virtually depleted and willpower becomes crucial to be able to finish.
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go to the wall,
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to be defeated in a conflict or competition; yield.
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to fail in business, especially to become bankrupt.
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to be put aside or forgotten.
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to take an extreme and determined position or measure.
I'd go to the wall to stop him from resigning.
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go over the wall, to break out of prison.
Roadblocks have been set up in an effort to capture several convicts who went over the wall.
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up against the wall,
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placed against a wall to be executed by a firing squad.
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in a crucial or critical position, especially one in which defeat or failure seems imminent.
Unless sales improve next month, the company will be up against the wall.
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noun
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a vertical construction made of stone, brick, wood, etc, with a length and height much greater than its thickness, used to enclose, divide, or support
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( as modifier )
wall hangings
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(often plural) a structure or rampart built to protect and surround a position or place for defensive purposes
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Technical name: paries. anatomy any lining, membrane, or investing part that encloses or bounds a bodily cavity or structure
abdominal wall
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mountaineering a vertical or almost vertical smooth rock face
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anything that suggests a wall in function or effect
a wall of fire
a wall of prejudice
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to try to achieve something impossible
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to force into an awkward situation
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to be ruined; collapse financially
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slang to cause to become crazy or furious
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slang to become crazy or furious
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to be in a very difficult situation
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See off-the-wall
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See wall-to-wall
verb
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to protect, provide, or confine with or as if with a wall
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(often foll by up) to block (an opening) with a wall
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to seal by or within a wall or walls
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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wallsimple
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wallssimple
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have walledperfect
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has walledperfect
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am wallingprogressive
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are wallingprogressive
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is wallingprogressive
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have been wallingperfect progressive
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has been wallingperfect progressive
Past
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walledsimple
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had walledperfect
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was wallingprogressive
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were wallingprogressive
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had been wallingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of wall
First recorded before 900; (for the noun) Middle English; Old English w(e)all, from Latin vallum “palisade,” derivative of vallus “stake, post”; see wale 1; verb derivative of the noun
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:
“Molly is permanently attached to the wall and isn’t for sale,” Art of Play wrote in its post.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026
The object at the center of the dispute was Molly, a mechanical yellow bird mounted on the store’s wall and used in its magic shows.
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2026
Two paintings by impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen from a museum in southern France and later discovered hidden behind a wall, have sustained slight damage, prosecutors said on Monday.
From Barron's ● Oct. 12, 2026
Dr Lindsay said: "We have identified a number of different fragments that have been incorporated into the retaining wall of Perth Station, for example, and into boundary walls of gardens."
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
Just inside his small private entrance a wooden bench ran along the wall.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
"During the initial search, we had examined the walls, checking for hollow spaces," said Sainte.
From Barron's ● Oct. 12, 2026
One particularly striking finding concerns tungsten, an extremely heat-resistant metal selected for the interior walls of more than a dozen next-generation fusion machines.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 10, 2026
Other videos on TikTok and Instagram showed broken toilets, holes in walls and mouldy ceilings across the country.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
A draft of the study didn’t propose only one solution but advocated for 23 different strategies, including bluff stabilization, catchment walls, sand placement, engineered revetments or seawalls and rail-foundation improvements.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
Before I left the house, I paused to look around at my room, its walls covered with Essa Lightborne fan art, ATO art, and the framed printout of the “Bye Forever, I Guess” text.
From "Bye Forever, I Guess" by Jodi Meadows
But as the river was walled in against flooding, more people built even closer to it, and floodwater had no place to go to recharge the water table — nowhere but down and out.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
Instinct’s service exists outside of Apple’s walled garden.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
Tokenized deposits typically are issued on private blockchains or walled gardens where one bank’s network isn’t necessarily connected to that of another bank.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Saving in a tax-advantaged 529 means the contributed funds grow tax-free and are walled away from other regular family savings.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026
Anya let Ilana pull her through the kitchen, bustling with even more people, out a back door and into a walled courtyard.
From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack
Earlier this year, the militia tightened its hold on El Fasher by walling it off with a sand berm, according to satellite photos published in August by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
America has prospered for centuries not by walling itself off but by attracting people who bring energy, ideas, and investment.
From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2025
To make ends meet, Matthew already has to spend time away from the farm doing freelance dry stone walling work, and Liz runs a full-time business, with another part-time job to keep the family afloat.
From BBC ● Dec. 1, 2024
Work crews followed them in, razing trees and greenery and walling off the space by double-stacking heavy metal cargo containers around the entire park perimeter.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2024
I want to tell her that the only thing you get from walling yourself in is empty.
From "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" by A.S. King
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.
