Melee

Hand-to-hand combat

For other uses, see Melee (disambiguation).

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

A melee (/ˈmeɪleɪ/ or /ˈmɛleɪ/) is a confused hand-to-hand fight among several people. The English term melee originated circa 1648 from the French word mêlée (French: [mɛle]), derived from the Old French mesler, from which medley and meddle were also derived.[1]

The 1812 tabletop wargame Kriegsspiel, and H.G. Wells' 1913 Little Wars, referred to the hand-combat stage of the game as a melée, or mêlée, respectively.[2][3] The term was brought over to tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, and in turn to role-playing video games, to describe any close-combat encounter.[4]

## See also

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* Combatives
* Tournament (medieval) § Melee

## References

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1. ^ "Definition of melee". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2 March 2021. Retrieved 10 June 2017.
2. ^ W. R. Livermore (1882). The American Kriegsspiel (PDF). Riverside Press, Cambridge. p. 105\. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-06-04. Retrieved 2019-08-14. "The first point to be considered is the number of combatants on either side and the relative advantages under which they are fighting; the second the losses and duration of the melee"
3. ^ H.G. Wells (1913). Little Wars. Frank Palmer Publishing. "We did at last contrive to do so ; we invented what we call the melee, and our revised rules in the event of a melee will be found set out upon a later page"
4. ^ Michael J. Tresca (November 10, 2010). The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. McFarland. ISBN 9780786460090. Archived from the original on March 27, 2023. Retrieved October 27, 2020.