Melee aboard ships at the Battle of Sluys 1340 (BNF Fr. 2643, 15th century)
Battle of Lützen by Carl Wahlbom depicting a melee in which King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed on 6 November 1632

A melee (/ˈmeɪleɪ/ or /ˈmɛleɪ/, French: mêlée, (French: [mɛle]) or pell-mell is disorganized hand-to-hand combat in battles fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts.[1] In military aviation, a melee has been defined as "[a]n air battle in which several aircraft, both friend and foe, are confusingly intermingled".[2]

History of the term

In the 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, Sir Thomas North uses the term 'pelmel' to refer to a disorganized retreat.[3] The phrase was later used in its current spelling in Shakespeare's Richard III, 1594:

"March on, ioine brauelie, let vs to it pell mell, / If not to heauen then hand in hand to hell."

The phrase comes from the French expression pêle-mêle, a rhyme based on the old French mesler, meaning to mix or mingle.[3][4]

The French term melee was first used in English in c. 1640 (also derived from the old French mesler,[5] but the Old French stem survives in medley and meddle).[1]

Lord Nelson described his tactics for the Battle of Trafalgar as inducing a "pell mell battle" focused on engagements between individual ships where the superior morale and skill of the Royal Navy would prevail.[6]

Usage in sport

In Australian Rules Football, the term "melee" is used by the Australian Football League, sports commentators and journalists as a polite term for a brawl or fighting during a football match,[7] where football players physically attack. Melees often start as verbal disagreements between a small number players from the opposing teams, but can quickly escalate into many players from both teams joining in with this physical scuffle.[8]

See also

Look up melee or mêlée in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Notes

  1. 1 2 OED 2015.
  2. ↑ Kumar, DeRemer & Marshall 2004, p. 462.
  3. 1 2 "'Pell-mell' - the meaning and origin of this phrase".
  4. ↑ "Pell-mell". 26 July 2021.
  5. ↑ "Melee". 29 November 2021.
  6. ↑ Fremont-Barnes 2005, p. 38.
  7. ↑ "Laws of Australian Rules Football, 2019 - page 8" (PDF). Australian Football League. 4 December 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  8. ↑ AFL Melees: Pies, Cats, Port, Dons, Demons and Tigers, retrieved 2022-04-02

References

  • Fremont-Barnes, Gregory (2005), Trafalgar 1805: Nelson's Crowning Victory, Osprey Publishing, p. 38 38, ISBN 978-1-84176-892-2
  • Kumar, Bharat; DeRemer, Dale; Marshall, Douglas (2004), An Illustrated Dictionary of Aviation, McGraw Hill Professional, p. 462, ISBN 978-0-07-178260-9
  • "mêlée n.", Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.), Oxford University Press, March 2015


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