I thought this was just in my gaming group, and I was willing to let it slide for the sake of group happiness.
But, on G4TechTV last night, I heard it again. Mee-lee. MEE LEE combat.
Gamers, please, hear my cry. Say the word correctly!
Not according the the announcer from
Super Smash Brothers Mee-Lay!
I’m pretty sure its Mee-Lay, not Mee-Lee, or May-Lay.
The pronunciation guide on m-w.com has some weird mix between mee lay and may lay.
Regardless… meelee makes my ears bleed.
i know, but perhaps the spelling should be ‘meley’ then? otherwise i have hopes that the ‘melee’ pronounciation would gain status by popular usage. 
The first time I ever saw the word I thought it was muh-lee but my brother has the same IT’S MAY-LAY! reaction so now I just say mee-lee because it’s the one that hacks him off the most :D.
(And honestly, may-lay is probably correct but it just doesn’t sound right.)
Pedantic and picayune rant: I give it 3 on a scale of 10.
However, did you take into account that the person may have been speaking dialectal English or ESL? Perhaps he is from the Melee Peninsula (which runs from Siam to Singapore)! 
Sorry, both pronounciations are incorrect. The correct pronounciation is mell-ay, in my part of the world anyway.
I prefer to both spell and pronounce it mêlée.
Haven’t these people played Monkey Island? :dubious:
It’s pronounced mxyzptlk.
Those who don’t recognize the awesomeness that is Super Smash Bros. Melee do not deserve to speak, anyway.
Also, stop watching G4. It sucks.
– Imran
It’s fra-gee-lay.
Clever.
Didn’t they have to get him to say that 3 times or backwards or something? And they always did…
To refer to an older game medium – in Monopoly, the name of the railroad is pronounced “Redding,” not “Reeding.” /hijack
Backwards. For an all-powerful being from an alternate dimension, he was kinda dumb, wasn’t he?
I’m pretty sure it goes Suuuuper Smash Broooothers Maay-laay!!! I felt bad because I’d been pronouncing it wrong for years.
I’m not sure if I’d consider the American release of a Japanese video game’s pronunciation of a French word as being in any way definitive. “All your meelees belong to us” and all that.
In all fairness, the game was very well translated, boasting an impressive amount of text.
I’m pretty sure the game was originally written in both English and Japanese, as well.
– Hero of Time
It would be a shame if y’all got into a fight over this and had a melee over mel…oh never mind.
Since i grew up in Reading, i never had this problem. Everyone i played with already knew the correct pronunciation.
And i was always under the impression it was may-lay. Of course i still say “eee-light” instead of “eeee-leeeet” (elite), so perhaps i’m not the best person to be picking on mispronunciations.