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Melee Has French Roots
English has no shortage of words for confused and noisy fights, some (fray, brawl, scrap) more common than others (donnybrook, fracas). Melee tends to be encountered more often in written rather than spoken English, but it is far from obscure, and has seen increasing use especially in the context of video games featuring some form of hand-to-hand combat. Such games allow players to mix it up with all manner of rivals and baddies from the comfort and safety of their home, with mix being an especially apt word alongside melee: the latter comes from the French word mêlée, which in turn comes from the Old French verb mesler, meaning "to mix."
Examples of melee in a Sentence
Felipe Cardenas, New York Times, 14 June 2025
Kern Valley corrections officers resorted to blast grenades to quash the melee before finding Julian Mendez, 46, dead.
—Darrell Smith, Sacbee.com, 12 June 2025
Monday’s protests were largely calmer than Sunday’s melees, which left a trail of foam bullets around the city’s center, buildings vandalized, Waymos set ablaze and many protesters injured from the munitions.
—Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2025
The interplay of shooting, shield-parrying, and melee is unrelenting.
—Griff Griffin, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for melee
Cite this Entry
“Melee.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melee. Accessed 18 Jun. 2025.
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melee
noun
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