Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A large, often enclosed shopping complex containing various stores, businesses, and restaurants usually accessible by common passageways.
  • noun A street lined with shops and closed to vehicles.
  • noun A shady public walk or promenade.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A heavy hammer or club of any sort; especially, a heavy wooden hammer used by carpenters. Compare mallet and beetle, 1.
  • noun A war-hammer or martel-de-fer.
  • noun The head or striking part of a war-hammer or martel-de-fer.
  • noun The blunt or square projection of such a hammer, as distinguished from the beak on the opposite side of the handle: this blunt end was often divided into four, six, or more blunt points or protuberances.
  • noun An old game played with a wooden ball in a kind of smooth alley boarded in at each side, in which the ball was struck with a mallet in order to send it through an iron arch called the pass, placed at the end of the alley.
  • noun The mallet with which this game was played; also, the alley in which it was played.
  • noun [⟨ mall, verb] A blow.
  • noun A court: same as mallum, mallus.
  • noun A public walk; a level shaded walk.
  • To beat, especially with a mall or mallet; bruise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A large heavy wooden beetle; a mallet for driving anything with force; a maul.
  • noun obsolete A heavy blow.
  • noun An old game played with malls or mallets and balls. See Pall-mall.
  • noun A place where the game of mall was played. Hence: A public walk; a level shaded walk.
  • noun A public access area containing a promenade for pedestrians.
  • noun The paved or grassy strip between two roadways.
  • noun A shopping area with multiple shops and a concourse for predominantly or exclusively pedestrian use; in cities the concourse is usually a city street which may be temporarily or permamently closed to motor vehicles; in suburban areas, a mall is often located on a convenient highway, may be large, contained in one building or in multiple buildings connected by (usually covered) walkways. Also called shopping mall
  • noun A court of justice.
  • noun A place where justice is administered.
  • noun A place where public meetings are held.
  • transitive verb To beat with a mall; to beat with something heavy; to bruise; to maul.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A large heavy wooden beetle; a mallet for driving anything with force; a maul.
  • noun A heavy blow.
  • noun An old game played with malls or mallets and balls. See pall mall
  • noun A place where the game of mall was played.
  • noun A public walk; a level shaded walk.
  • noun US, Australia A pedestrianised street, especially a shopping precinct.
  • noun An enclosed shopping centre.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a public area set aside as a pedestrian walk
  • noun mercantile establishment consisting of a carefully landscaped complex of shops representing leading merchandisers; usually includes restaurants and a convenient parking area; a modern version of the traditional marketplace

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After The Mall, in London, England, originally a pall-mall alley.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French mail

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