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 "an air battle in which several aircraft, both friend and foe, are confusingly intermingled".^[2]

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]

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]

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

• Close-quarters combat
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