mall

[mawl; British also mal] /mɔl; British also mæl/
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.
Compare shopping center.
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.
Origin
1635-45; by ellipsis from pall mall; see mell2
Can be confused
mall, maul, maw.
Examples from the web for mall
  • The modern university has become a kind of intellectual shopping mall.
  • If you're considering one of the mall stores mentioned, sign up on their website for discounts.
  • Stroll around this sizable mall for some window-shopping and take in the giant sculptures.
  • The company acts as the online shopping mall for tens of thousands of small and mid-sized businesses.
  • Someone in a shopping mall, for example, might hold up his hand and see a map appear instantly at his fingertips.
  • The small dots of light would be individual street lights, and the large patch might be a shopping mall.
  • Maybe it's a video game you can't stop playing or a shopping mall that seems to swallow your wallet.
  • In the late afternoon, after a day at his desk, he often takes a seat at a café in the town shopping mall.
  • She brings him photographs of changes in their neighborhood: new houses, new stores opening at the mall.
  • The fee was a piece of a shopping mall he also owned.
British Dictionary definitions for mall

mall

/mæl; mɔːl/
noun
1.
a shaded avenue, esp one that is open to the public
2.
(US & Canadian, Austral & NZ) short for shopping mall
Word Origin
C17: after The Mall, in St James's Park, London. See pall-mall
Word Origin and History for mall
n.

1737, "shaded walk serving as a promenade," generalized from The Mall, name of a broad, tree-lined promenade in St. James's Park, London (so called from 1670s, earlier Maill, 1640s), which was so called because it formerly was an open alley that was used to play pall-mall, a croquet-like game involving hitting a ball with a mallet through a ring, from French pallemaille, from Italian pallamaglio, from palla "ball" (see balloon) + maglio "mallet" (see mallet). Modern sense of "enclosed shopping gallery" is from 1963. Mall rat is from 1985.

mall in Technology
World-Wide Web
A collection of World-Wide Web documents featuring commercial products and services, usually served by one particualr Internet access provider.
(1995-04-10)