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Mêlée
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Melee (from the French mêlée ) generally refers to disorganized close combat involving a group of fighters. A melee 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.
Origin of the term
The French term is the feminine past participle of the verb "to mix". Nominalized, it refers to any confused tangle or agitated scramble, in particular unordered combat.
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Encyclopedia
Melee (from the French mêlée ) generally refers to disorganized close combat involving a group of fighters. A melee 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.
Origin of the term
The French term is the feminine past participle of the verb "to mix". Nominalized, it refers to any confused tangle or agitated scramble, in particular unordered combat. The term descends from Old French meslede, from Vulgar Latin misculata "mixed", from Latin miscere "to mix"; compare mélange, milieu.
Like some other foreign-derived terms used in common English, the word is sometimes written in American English with the accents omitted, appearing as just "melee" and pronounced .
Historical use
During the Middle Ages, tournaments often contained a mêlée consisting of knights fighting one another on foot or while mounted, either divided into two sides or fighting as a free-for-all. The object was to capture opposing knights so that they could be ransomed, and this could be a very profitable business for such skilled knights as William Marshal. There was a tournament ground covering several square miles in northern France to which knights came from all over Europe to prove themselves in quite real combat. This was, in fact, the original form of tournaments and the most popular between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—jousting being a later development, and one that did not completely displace the mêlée until many more centuries had passed. The original mêlée was engaged with normal weapons and fraught with as much danger as a normal battle. Rules slowly tempered the danger, but at all times the mêlée was more dangerous than the joust.
Modern use
The term "melee" has been extended to refer to other forms of combat, such as a naval or armor battle that is fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts. The Battle of Trafalgar became a melee when the British ships broke the French and Spanish line, precipitating a ship-to-ship battle. In this instance, the melee was planned; Admiral Nelson used the superior fighting qualities of his crews to offset the greater French and Spanish numbers.
Melee is occasionally used to describe disorganized groups of people and vehicles, such as mobs, mosh pits, and traffic jams.
It is also used in sport. For example, the Australian Football League has an official (and somewhat controversial) melee rule which is used to fine players involved in on-field brawls, regardless of whether they throw punches or are simply pulling their teammates away from the fight.
Use in gaming
"Melee" has been adopted and popularized as a term in war-gaming, board games, and video games to encompass all close-quarter fighting. For instance, gamers will refer to "mêlée attacks" as opposed to "ranged attacks" in the context of first-person shooter, real-time tactics, computer role-playing games and paper role-playing games. The term describes directly striking an opponent at ranges generally less than a few feet with fists, feet, knives, swords, hammers, maces, the butt of a rifle or any other sharp or blunt instrument with the intention of causing harm.
The term is generally thought to be adopted from Dungeons and Dragons, which originally featured a 'melee phase' to represent the fighting of characters. The terms appears much earlier, however, in the H.G. Wells story Little Wars, in which the author develops a 'melee rule' in his war game.
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