A melee is a confused struggle with everybody mixed together. A general melee.
The confusion is the point, since a fight with any order is not a melee. The word is the same root as medley, and both mean a mixing.
1nounmeleeA confused struggle with everybody mixed together.
“The melee in the goalmouth lasted about eight seconds.”
melee is a struggle.
Also accepted in games: mêlée
French melee comes from mesler, to mix, from Latin miscere; it is a doublet of medley.
Proto-Indo-European
*meyḱ-
Latin
misceō — mix
Old French
meslee
French
mêlée
English, today
melee
Built from
French mêlée, from Old French meslee, feminine past participle of mesler (“to mix”), derived from Latin misceō (“mix”). a doublet of medley.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA