Word Confusion: Mall vs Maul vs Maw vs Moll

Plural: malls, mals [British]

Alternate spelling: mal [British]

Plural for the noun: mauls
Gerund: mauling

Third person present verb: mauls
Past tense or past participle: mauled
Present participle: mauling

Plural: maws

Plural: molls

A sheltered walk or promenade ²

• [Also pedestrian mall] A section of a street, typically in the downtown area of a city, from which vehicular traffic is excluded
• An urban street lined with shops and closed off to motor vehicles

[Historical] Another term for the game pall-mall ³

• An alley used for playing the game pall-mall
• The mallet used in the game of pall-mall

[Chiefly Upstate New York; also median strip] A strip of land, usually planted or paved, separating lanes of opposite traffic on highways, boulevards, divided highways, dual carriageways, freeways, or motorways, etc. ⁴

[Archaic] A heavy club or mace

[In rugby union] A loose scrum formed around a player with the ball off the ground

[Also known as beetle] A tool with a very heavy wooden head

Verb, intransitive:
[Rugby] Take part in a maul

Verb, transitive:
[Of an animal] Wound a person or animal by scratching and tearing

• Treat, handle, or use (someone or something) roughly

To injure by a rough beating, shoving, or the like

• Bruise

To split with a maul and wedge, as a wooden rail

Handle (someone) roughly, especially for sexual gratification

[Informal] Defeat heavily in a game or match

Subject to fierce criticism

• [Informal] The mouth or gullet of a greedy person

The crop or craw of a fowl

The stomach, especially that of an animal

A cavernous opening that resembles the open jaws of an animal

The symbolic or theoretical center of a voracious hunger or appetite of any kind

[Informal] Mother ²

• A female criminal

[Australia, New Zealand, and United States; usually pejorative or self-deprecating; also molly] A prostitute

Proper noun:
A female given name ²

When you travel around the country you find the same stores in each mall.

The pedestrian traffic through the grassy mall is heaviest during the summer lunch hours.

There are plans to build a new mall in the middle of town and block off the streets.

Pall mall was popular in Italy, France and Scotland, and spread to England in the 17th century.

The street Pall Mall in London was on the site of a pall-mall alley.

Fulton Avenue parkway in Middletown is a mall on either end and narrow in the middle of the route.

The mall used in the game of pall-mall ranged from lightweight mauls to mallets to something akin to field hockey sticks.

Pulling his war maul from the woodshed, he tried to reassure his woman.

Little headway was made in the maul, but the ball was switched across the field.

A wood-headed maul is best for driving wooden wedges.

Verb, intransitive:
The forwards rucked and mauled to near perfection.

A bear killed one hiker, and the other was badly mauled.

The troops were severely mauled before evacuating the island.

Verb, transitive:
The herdsmen were mauled by lions.

The book was badly mauled by its borrowers.

All he could talk about was the game when we were about to be mauled by an angry crowd.

If the edge on your maul is blunt, it will often times bounce off the wood you are trying to split.

The last thing I wanted to do was have a slobbering drunk mauling me.

The team were mauled 4–0 by Manchester City.

During the trial, she was mauled by the media.

I was cramming large pieces of toast and cheese down my maw.

Birds place their food in their maw for preliminary maceration.

The hog maw is the stomach of a pig.

He walked into the gaping maw of Hell.

The ravenous maw of Death opened before me.

My maw made me my favorite meal.

This is beamed particularly at the over-25 age group, and merrymakers should dress as their favorite infamous gangsters and molls from the movies.

In Drexler’s hothouse world of boxers, gangsters, and abused molls, women have to fight back.

Bonnie Parker was a moll in her own right as well as Clyde Barrow’s moll.

She was wall-to-wall M&S, wall-to-wall company moll.

Every day, the girls are haranguing her about her sexual exploits; talking about her as a slut, as a moll, somebody who sleeps with anybody.

Proper noun:
Moll is the most amazing baker — you probably know her as Mary Brown.

Mary “Moll” Davis (c. 1648 – 1708) was a courtesan and mistress of King Charles II of England.

“As an actress Moll Davis enjoyed the same pedigree and path to the Royal favour as her contemporary and rival Nell Gwynn” (Portrait).

1. 1960s in the sense of a shopping mall.
2. By July 1665 Pepys used ‘Pell Mell’ to refer to the street as well as the game, which evolved into The Mall, a tree-bordered walk in St James’s Park, London, formerly the site of a pall-mall alley.
3. Mid-17th century in the sense of a shortening of the game of pall-mall.
4. Evolved from the concept of The Mall as a promenade mall.

1. Old English maga and the Middle English mawe in the sense stomach is of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch maag, the German Magen, and the Old Norse magi meaning stomach.
2. Variant of ma which evolved from mama and originally mother which is from before 900 A.D.

1. 1905–10; gun moll came from gun in an earlier British argot for thief.
2. Early 17th century as a pet form of the given name Mary.