Word.ws English Dictionary

mallternative

mallternative noun: any style or genre that is ostensibly counterculture or alternative, but actually mainstream enough to be encountered at a mall, or among the type of people who frequent a mall.

Noun

mallternative (countable and uncountable, plural mallternatives)

  1. (attributive, derogatory, often, sometimes, uncountable) Any style or genre that is ostensibly counterculture or alternative, but actually mainstream enough to be encountered at a mall, or among the type of people who frequent a mall.
    • As the "over-the-counterculture'" has grown, as once cutting-edge alternative styles and products have become "mallternative," Newbury Comics has benefited from the market moving in its direction. Black leather biker jackets, body piercings, tattoos, and jarring hairstyles, which once could shock...1997 August 24, Jim Sullivan, “Counter culture”, in The Boston Globe Magazine
  2. (countable) An alternative to a mall, particularly an open-air urban shopping district.
    • Although several energy-depleting surface parking lots remain, Mass Avenue's interesting mix of business and people is quickly turning it into a full-fledged window shopper's mallternative, full of energy.2004, Kyle Ezell, Get Urban!: The Complete Guide to City Living, Capital Books, →ISBN, page 163

Forms of mallternative

pluralmallternatives

Origin of mallternative

Blend of mall + alternative.

Questions about mallternative

What does mallternative mean?
Mallternative means any style or genre that is ostensibly counterculture or alternative, but actually mainstream enough to be encountered at a mall, or among the type of people who frequent a mall.
What part of speech is mallternative?
Mallternative is a noun.
What is the plural of mallternative?
The plural of mallternative is mallternatives.

Words near mallternative in the dictionary

  1. mallrat
  2. mallrats
  3. malls
  4. mallsoft
  5. mallspeak
  6. mallternative
  7. mallternatives
  8. Malltraeth
  9. Malltraeth Marsh
  10. Mallu
  11. mallum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mallternative (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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