Melee

For other meanings of the term, see melée (disambiguation).

Mêlée (from French, from Old French meslede, from Vulgar Latin misculāta "mixed") generally refers to disorganized hand-to-hand combat involving a group of fighters. A mêlée ensues when groups become locked together in combat with no regard to group tactics or fighting as an organized unit; each participant fights as an individual.

During the Middle Ages tournaments often contained a mêlée wherein men at arms would fight dismounted en masse. These mock battles were 'every man for himself' with the winner usually being the 'last man standing.'

The term mêlée has been extended to refer to other forms of combat such as a naval or armor battle that has become disorganized and is fought at abnormally close range. The Battle of Trafalgar became a mêlée when the British ships broke the French and Spanish line, precipitating a ship-to-ship battle. In this instance, the mêlée was planned; Admiral Nelson used the superior fighting qualities of his crews to offset the greater French and Spanish numbers.

Mêlée is occasionally used to describe disorganized crowds of people and vehicles, such as mobs, mosh pits, and traffic jams.

Like many other foreign-derived terms used in common English, the word is typically written with the accents omitted, appearing as just "melee". This often leads to the mispronunciation of term as "me-lee" instead of the correct "may-lay".

Use in Usage of this word has increased in certain segments of the population due to its presence in role-playing games and computer games, such as those in the first person shooter genre. "Mêlée" originally refers to confused, free-for-all combat among a group of fighters, as in a medieval tournament, as opposed to single combat. The term has been adopted and popularized by gamers to encompass all hand-to-hand fighting. For instance, gamers will refer to "mêlée attacks" as opposed to "ranged attacks".
In such games, a mêlée attack will only hit its target when at extremely close range. It often uses no ammunition, and to create game balance, these attacks may be faster or more powerful than ranged weapons for which ammunition is required. Due to the difficulty of approaching and attacking an opponent at extremely close range when ranged attacks are available to players or enemies, a successful mêlée attack is often considered elegant or skillful, and the game may reward players who manage to successfully utilize such attacks.
Other game genres in which this term is used are role-playing, action, and tactical games in which it is considered as any non-magic attack used at close range.
Particularly in role-playing games, players may refer to certain classes, characters or jobs as "mêlées." These "mêlée classes" can often include monks, assassins, warriors, paladins, thieves, rogues, knights, and dragoons.
Melee (with no accented characters) was the name of the Metagaming Concepts MicroGame board game that became the fantasy combat part of The Fantasy Trip role-playing game.
Melee (with no accented characters)is often used as a generic term to refer to any Live Combat Bofferstyle games, and LARPs.
Melee : Culture, Crafts and Combat is the name of the rule system published by Fury Concepts for the Kingdom of Praelia, which is a Non Profit Educational Sports Reenactment Society.
Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube is the second video game in the Super Smash Bros. series released by Nintendo. In this game, as many as four players take on the roles of popular first-party and second-party Nintendo characters for a free-for-all battle with similar rules to sumo wrestling, where the last one in the arena wins.

Melee

See also