Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as mêlée.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • I will, however, play my part with my pistols in the approaching melley, in respect my carabine unhappily remains at

    A Legend of Montrose 2008

  • Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns, some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy.

    The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Stanley Lane-Poole

  • The fire of these huge floating castles nearly caused a panic among the Turks, but they soon pulled past them, and a general melley ensued.

    The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Stanley Lane-Poole

  • Victory and defeat alike forgotten, the crews staggered erect and flung themselves into the river, the slender boats capsizing and spinning futile around in a melley of oars.

    Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story Max Beerbohm 1914

  • Victory and defeat alike forgotten, the crews staggered erect and flung themselves into the river, the slender boats capsizing and spinning futile around in a melley of oars.

    Zuleika Dobson 1911

  • Eight minutes elapsed from the time when Scarlett gave the word to charge, until the moment when the Russians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episode has no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique.

    Biographical Study of A W Kinglake Tuckwell, Rev W 1902

  • Not many years were to pass before it was to become an arena in which all the various forces of American Christianity were to be found contending against all the powers of darkness, not without dealing some mutual blows in the melley.

    A History of American Christianity 1830-1907 1897

  • Russians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episode has no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique.

    Biographical Study of A.W. Kinglake William Tuckwell 1874

  • Through all the melley, her fancy spied one shining figure in bright armour like, so it seemed to her, Archangel Michael or Archangel Gabriel, riding in the pride of the fight with a smile on his lips, sorrow in his heart, and a token of white ribbon between his breast-plate and his breast.

    If I Were King Justin McCarthy 1871

  • This was the last I remember clearly, for the lust of battle was on me, and I can recall no more of what chanced for a little, than I could in later years of the wild melley on the main street of Germantown, or of the struggle in the redoubt at Yorktown.

    Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker 1871

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