HomeServicesBlogDictionariesContactSpanish Course
← Back to search

Meaning of mallgoth | Babel Free

Noun CEFR B2
/ˈmɔːlɡɒθ/

Definitions

  1. Originally (derogatory), an inauthentic or trendy goth; now, a person who dresses in goth-inspired clothes, is interested in industrial metal and nu metal music, etc.
    countable
  2. The culture or fashion style adopted by such a person.
    uncountable

Examples

“MallGoths are young in age, spending the majority of their time after school at the mall. […] MallGoths dress differently to seem "in the know," when, in actuality, they have no clue what Goth culture really is. To them, Goth is a fashion statement and nothing more.”
““Lester, what the fuck?” he said, grinning and laughing as he clapped Lester on the shoulder, taking a young mall-goth’s five bucks out of a hand whose fingernails were painted with chipped black polish. “What the hell is going on here?””
“[A]lternative teen culture was really concentrated, with mallgoths, emos, and (shudder) scene kids sharing equal grounds on Myspace.”
““Funnily enough ‘mallgoth’ was meant to be a bit of an insult,” explains Trinity Levy, the Arizona-based high school senior who started the Instagram account @1990smallgoth. “Being called a mallgoth was the equivalent of being called a poser. The purpose of it was to describe the kids who loved Marilyn Manson and bought Tripp pants from Hot Topic back in the day, but still identified or were seen as goth. I'd say that that broad description is still true at its core. Despite its name, it doesn’t have anything at all to do with the goth subculture besides sharing a few aesthetics.””
“Next, are the wannabe mall-goths of the 2000s. Self-proclaimed "e-girls" and "e-boys" sporting chain link chokers and belts, big black bell bottoms, outfits plastered with images of roses, and "emo" accessories and makeup that strives for a look that breaks society's conventions, but falls short.”
“My own teen encounters with the look occurred during the ’90s reign of Hot Topic mall goths, an era Jeremy Scott gleefully—and a good deal less restrainedly—celebrates in his Moschino collection, an exuberant gathering of Halloween kitsch that will likely make traditional goths groan.”
“"The skull is all-purpose," said Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker. "It simultaneously refers to horror movies, to the Misfits and, by extension, all punk rock, and to a generalized culture of blackness and spookiness and the larger, mall-Goth culture."”
“For the most part, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has grown stronger with every season. […] Case in point: the last five minutes of the finale, which included a six-month time jump; Daisy adopting a mallgoth vigilante persona; and the "birth" of AIDA, a humanoid A.I.”
“For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, "mall goth" was a style of dress that combined the hallmarks of punk, goth and metal subcultures and thrived like bacteria in the petri dish of the early 2000s. […] As a black trans femme, [Aaron Rose] Philip speaks to why the revival of mall goth is doing so much better with racial diversity compared to the early 2000s, when the subculture's largest demographic consisted of angry suburban white teens: "That edgy kind of feel resonates, [but] a lot of people thought they weren't allowed to be goth because they only knew it as a white thing," she says.”

CEFR level

B2
Upper Intermediate
This word is part of the CEFR B2 vocabulary — upper intermediate level.

See also

Learn this word in context

See mallgoth used in real conversations inside our free language course.

Start Free Course