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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."
Synonyms
Examples of melee in a Sentence
Marites Dañguilan Vitug, Foreign Affairs, 18 Sep. 2024
Comedy Central Website Shuttered, Decades of Daily Show and Colbert Report Clips Gone in a Blink
The Daily Show went live 30 minutes after President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump left the CNN stage following a 90-minute, audience-free melee moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
—Ryan Schwartz, TVLine, 27 June 2024
The melee followed Uruguay’s 1-0 loss to Colombia in a game in which emotions were already high.
—Rudy Chinchilla, NBC News, 11 July 2024
Three days before the multi-person melee, a Santa Monica man allegedly attacked three women at the beach, attempting to strangle a 17-year-old before assaulting and biting a woman who tried to come to her aid.
—Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times, 9 July 2024
See all Example Sentences for melee 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'melee.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Melee.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melee. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
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melee
noun
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