wall
pronunciation
How to pronounce wall in British English:
UK [wɔːl]
How to pronounce wall in American English:
US [wɔːl]
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- Noun:
- an architectural partition with a height and length greater than its thickness; used to divide or enclose an area or to support another structure
- an embankment built around a space for defensive purposes
- anything that suggests a wall in structure or function or effect
- a masonry fence (as around an estate or garden)
- (anatomy) a layer (a lining or membrane) that encloses a structure
- a vertical (or almost vertical) smooth rock face (as of a cave or mountain)
- a layer of material that encloses space
- a difficult or awkward situation
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- Verb:
- surround with a wall in order to fortify
Word Origin
- wall
- wall: [OE] Wall was borrowed into Old English from Latin vallum ‘rampart’. This originally denoted a ‘stockade made of stakes’, and it was derived from vallus ‘stake’. German wall, Dutch wal, and Swedish vall, also borrowings from Latin, preserve its meaning ‘rampart, embankment’, but English wall has become considerably wider in its application. An interval is etymologically a space ‘between ramparts’.=> interval
- wall (n.)
- Old English weall, Anglian wall "rampart, dike, earthwork" (natural as well as man-made), "dam, cliff, rocky shore," also "defensive fortification around a city, side of a building," an Anglo-Frisian and Saxon borrowing (Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wal) from Latin vallum "wall, rampart, row or line of stakes," apparently a collective form of vallus "stake," from PIE *walso- "a post." Swedish vall, Danish val are from Low German. Meaning "interior partition of a structure" is mid-13c. In this case, English uses one word where many languages have two, such as German Mauer "outer wall of a town, fortress, etc.," used also in reference to the former Berlin Wall, and wand "partition wall within a building" (compare the distinction, not always rigorously kept, in Italian muro/parete, Irish mur/fraig, Lithuanian muras/siena, etc.). The Latin word for "defensive wall" was murus (see mural). Anatomical use from late 14c. To give (someone) the wall "allow him or her to walk on the (cleaner) wall side of the pavement" is from 1530s. To turn (one's) face to the wall "prepare to die" is from 1570s. Phrase up the wall "angry, crazy" is from 1951; off the wall "unorthodox, unconventional" is recorded from 1966, American English student slang. To go over the wall "escape" (originally from prison) is from 1933. Wall-to-wall (adj.) recorded 1939, of shelving, etc.; metaphoric use (usually disparaging) is from 1967.
- wall (v.)
- "to enclose with a wall," late Old English *weallian (implied in geweallod), from the source of wall (n.). Meaning "fill up (a doorway, etc.) with a wall" is from c. 1500. Meaning "shut up in a wall, immure" is from 1520s. Related: Walled; walling.
Synonym
Example
- 1. To test your standing posture take the wall test .
- 2. Soon after , they hit a wall .
- 3. And the biggest emerging markets seem to have hit a wall .
- 4. But can you love the berlin wall ?
- 5. Thumbtacks anchor a colorful picasso print to the wall .