Melee weapon


A melee weapon, hand weapon or close combat weapon, is any weapon used in direct hand-to-hand combat, i.e. for use within the physical reach of the weapon itself while being handheld by the user. By contrast, a ranged weapon is capable of engaging targets at a distance beyond immediate physical contact.

Etymology

The term melee originates in the 1640s from the French word mêlée, which refers to disorganized hand-to-hand combat, a close-quarters battle, a brawl, or a confused fight; especially involving many combatants.
The 1812 tabletop war game, Kriegsspiel referred to the hand-combat stage of the game as a melee. Later war games would follow this pattern. From there, gamers would eventually begin to call the weapons used in that stage melee weapons.

Categories

Melee weapons can be broadly divided into three categories :
Many weapons fit into multiple categories, or fit in between them; many polearms such as halberds, lucerne hammers and guisarmes add edged and blunt methods of attack to a spear base, and various hooked weapons such as billhooks, fauchards, falxes and bec de corbin evade easy classification; while flexible weapons such as whips don't fall into any of these categories.

List of melee weapons