 Melee aboard ships at the Battle of Sluys 1340 (BNF Fr. 2643, 15th century) Battle of Lützen by Carl Wahlbom depicting a melee in which King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed on 6 November 1632. A melee ( or , French: mêlée ) or pell-mell is disorganized hand-to-hand combat in battles fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts. In military aviation, a melee has been defined as "[a]n air battle in which several aircraft, both friend and foe, are confusingly intermingled". History of the term In the 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, Sir Thomas North uses the term '' to refer to a disorganized URL The phrase was later used in its current spelling in Shakespeare's Richard III, 1594:
— Melee aboard ships at the Battle of Sluys 1340 (BNF Fr. 2643, 15th century) Battle of Lützen by Carl Wahlbom depicting a melee in which King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed on 6 November 1632. A melee ( or , French: mêlée ) or pell-mell is disorganized hand-to-hand combat in battles fought at abnormally close range with little central control once it starts. In military aviation, a melee has been defined as "[a]n air battle in which several aircraft, both friend and foe, are confusingly intermingled". History of the term In the 1579 and it was all about fighting of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, Sir Thomas North uses the term '' to refer to a disorganized URL The phrase was later used in its current spelling in Shakespeare's Richard III, 1594:
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and it was all about fighting