melee / mêlée
noun

- a confused, disorderly fight among a number of people; hand-to-hand combat

- figuratively, any confused or turbulent struggle: a scramble, a free-for-all

- in the diamond trade, small stones — those under roughly 0.2 carats — sold and sorted in mixed parcels rather than graded one by one

Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Britannica

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WORD ORIGIN

The word arrived in English around the 1640s from French mêlée, from Old French meslee — "a brawl, a confused fight" but also, tellingly, "a mixture, a blend." It is the past participle of mesler, "to mix" (modern French mêler), from Latin miscēre, to mix.

So a melee is, at root, simply a mixing — of bodies, of blows, of everything that ought to have stayed in order. The same Latin root gives us “medley”, “mixture”, “miscellaneous” and “promiscuous”. A melee is what happens when a crowd is stirred like a pot.


Curiously, the word was borrowed once in the Middle Ages, lost, and then re-borrowed fresh in the 17th century — English forgot it, then took it back.

THE OTHER MEANING

Because mêlée meant "a mixture," the diamond trade adopted it for its smallest stones — the tiny brilliants under 0.2 carats that encircle a centre stone in a halo or pavé setting. These are never graded individually. They are traded in mixed parcels — hundreds glittering on a sorting table at once, blended and sold by the handful. A mixture, exactly as the word promises.

So the next time someone admires a sparkling engagement ring, you may quietly note that most of those diamonds are technically a battle. The tiny stones and the confused fight are the same word.

Helga & Paul Smith


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SYNONYMS

affray, brawl, brouhaha, clash, commotion, donnybrook, fracas, fray, free-for-all, MELEE, MÊLÉE, ruckus, scrap, scrimmage, scrum, scuffle, skirmish, tumult, turmoil, tussle

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“I love the association of people fighting and gemstones glittering in the word MELEE.”

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