melee

UK/ˈmɛˌleɪ//ˈmeɪˌleɪ/

melee noun: a battle fought at close range, (especially) one not involving ranged weapons; hand-to-hand combat; brawling.

Noun

melee (countable and uncountable, plural melees)

(especially) A battle fought at close range, (especially) one not involving ranged weapons; hand-to-hand combat; brawling.
- Honestly, a lot of what this episode did right had more to do with the scenes that surrounded the enormous melee than those hyper-edited clashes of swords.2019 April 28, Alex McLevy, “Game Of Thrones Suffers the Fog of War in the Battle against the Dead (Newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 31 May 2021
- The attack also afforded Helena to a front-seat view of literal air-to-air melee combat, as one Wildcat pilot of the Cactus Air Force, who was swooping in to help break up the attack, found himself out of machine-gun ammo; instead, he dropped his landing gear, positioned himself above the nearest...2021 March 10, Drachinifel, 5:50 from the start, in Guadalcanal Campaign - The Big Night Battle: Night 1 (IJN 3(?) : 2 USN), archived from the original on 17 Oct 2022
A loud, confused or tumultuous fight, argument or scrap.
- The ball did not appear to cross the line, a view supported by television replays as Blues captain John Terry also joined the melee, but referee Atkinson awarded the goal - to the obvious anger of Spurs and their management team.2012 April 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 1-5 Chelsea”, in BBC
- Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver said Tuesday that the federal assault charges filed against her a day earlier related to a chaotic melee outside an Immigration Customs and Enforcement detention facility are “absurd.”2025 May 20, Shania Shelton and Holmes Lybrand, “Democratic congresswoman says federal charges in ICE facility scuffle are ‘absurd’”, in CNN
Any confused, disorganised, disordered or chaotic situation.
- Within this melee of intersections between English and Cantonese, the students, being themselves bilingually fluent, were able to navigate with perfect ease in communicative contexts where the provenance of a certain term or expression matters little.2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings...
Lively contention or debate, skirmish.
(historical) A cavalry exercise in which two groups of riders try to cut paper plumes off the helmets of their opponents, the contest continuing until no member of one group retains his plume.
Small cut and polished gemstones sold in lots.

Verb

melee (third-person singular simple present melees, present participle meleeing, simple past and past participle meleed)

(slang) To physically hit in close quarters, as opposed to shooting, blowing up, or other ranged means of damage. Often refers to the usage of a hand-to-hand weapon.

Adjective

melee (not comparable)

Of a weapon: used in close-range combat, e.g. a sword. Compare with ranged.
- A melee weapon is used to attack a target within 5 feet of you, whereas a ranged weapon is used to attack a target at a distance.2018, Wizards of the Coast, Basic Rules for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e)
Of a character, using melee weapons.

melee meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

melee in Tamil

அடிதடிச் சண்டை, கைகலப்பு

melee in Urdu

افراتفری, بلوہ, دست بدست لڑائی, فساد, گھمسان کا رن, ہنگامہ

melee in Malayalam

disturbance, fracas, rumpus: വഴക്ക്, പട, കശപിശ, കശുപിശ, ബലാബലം, ബലപരീക്ഷണം

melee in Kannada

ದೊಂಬಿ ಹೋರಾಟ, ಪ್ರಕ್ಷುಬ್ಧವಾದ ಹೊಡೆದಾಟ, ಕೈಕೈ ಹೊಡೆದಾಟ, ಗೊಂದಲದ ಕಾದಾಟ, ಬಿರುಸು ವಾಗ್ವಾದ, ಚುರುಕು ಚರ್ಚೆ

More languagesFewer languages

melee in Arabic: شجار

Examples of melee in a sentence

I fragged him once and then meleed him for the kill.
And what differentiates a melee from a shemozzle and a free-for-all?
During the melee the suspect had run off, showing a clear pair of heels.

All 12 example sentences with melee

Forms of melee

Noun
plural	melees
alternative form	mêlée
alternative form (rare)	melée
Verb
third-person singular present	melees
present participle	meleeing
past participle	meleed
past	meleed

Plural of melee: melees

Origin of melee

Borrowed from French mêlée, from Old French meslee, feminine past participle of mesler (“to mix”), derived from Latin misceō (“mix”). Doublet of medley.

Questions about melee

What does melee mean?: Melee means a battle fought at close range, (especially) one not involving ranged weapons; hand-to-hand combat; brawling.
What is melee in Tamil?: Melee in Tamil is அடிதடிச் சண்டை, கைகலப்பு. See Melee meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is melee?: Melee can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce melee?: Melee is pronounced /ˈmɛˌleɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of melee?: The plural of melee is melees.

Words near melee in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: melee (page history and authors); melee (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); melee (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); melee (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); melee (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-melee.ogg.

Cite this entry: “melee.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/melee. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.