melo

See also: Melo, meló, melô, mélo, mělo, melo-, mélo-, mēļo, and мело

English

Etymology

Perhaps after French mélo.

Noun

melo (countable and uncountable, plural melos)

1. (informal, British) Abbreviation of melodrama.
   • 1889 December 24, Ernest Dowson, “To Arthur Moore”, in edited by Desmond Flower and Henry Maas, The Letters of Ernest Dowson, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, published 1967, →LCCN, page 121:

     Bar burlesque & Penleyan comedy I am becoming tolerant of this insipid British drama. Even bad melo doesn’t cause me to vomit as it did of old.

   • 1920 April 23, Aldous Huxley, “To Arnold Bennett”, in edited by Grover Smith, Letters of Aldous Huxley, London: Chatto & Windus, published 1969, page 183:

     One is a melodrama about Bolshevism—the break up of the Armies in 1917—what one wd call a West End melodrama as opposed to a Lyceum melo.

   • 1923, Terry Ramsaye, “The Romantic History of the Motion Picture”, in Photoplay, page 41:

     She learned to read and write on the road and between scenes backstage, under the tutorship of the “female heavy” of a melodrama company. Meanwhile Mary listened and learned of the world about her. She heard a very great deal of the chesty gossip of melo actors discussing “when I was with Belasco,” and came to learn that on this wonderful Broadway Belasco was master.

   • 1971 August 26, Radio Times:

     True life was melo about the first woman the George Cross. (As a stump word, ‘melo’ is short for ‘melodrama’.)

   • 1973 December 20, Radio Times:

     The Roots of Heaven..John Huston’s melo about elephant conservation.

   • 2012, Bill Thomas, Upstage, Downstage, Cross: An Actor Emerges in Early English 20th Century Theatre, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 155:

     “And a melo?” Miss Collins asked. Richard looked to Miss Joyce for help. “A melodrama! You don’t know?” A somewhat astonished Miss Joyce commented. “The only plays melo companies perform are melodramas. There are several of them touring out there,” broadly gesturing with her arm. “They’re known as ‘blood and thunders.’ A good melo actor can work all year round. […] Melos are a good place for a young actor to start,” she added.

Anagrams

• mole, elmo, molé, Elmo, moel, Mole, Lomé

Esperanto

Etymology

From Latin meles.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈmelo]
• Rhymes: -elo
• Hyphenation: me‧lo

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

melo (accusative singular melon, plural meloj, accusative plural melojn)

1. badger

Finnish

Verb

melo

1. inflection of meloa:
   1. present active indicative connegative
   2. second-person singular present imperative
   3. second-person singular present active imperative connegative

Anagrams

• Elmo

Italian

Etymology 1

From Vulgar Latin melus, from Latin mālus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈme.lo/
• Rhymes: -elo
• Hyphenation: mé‧lo

Noun

melo m (plural meli)

1. apple tree, apple

Related terms

• mela
• meleto
• melo selvatico

Further reading

• mélo¹ in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛ.lo/
• Rhymes: -ɛlo
• Hyphenation: mè‧lo

Noun

melo m (plural meli)

1. (literary, obsolete) song; poetry

Further reading

• mèlo in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Anagrams

• Molè, elmo, mole

Latin

Etymology

Attested since about late 4th century CE, since Palladius and author(s) of Historia Augusta. Seems to be a colloquial shortening of mēlopepō, from Ancient Greek μηλοπέπων (mēlopépōn, “melon”), probably with influence from μῆλον (mêlon, “apple”). See mālum and mālus

Noun

mēlō m (genitive mēlōnis); third declension (Late Latin)

1. Some cucurbit, likely an apple-shaped melon.
   • c. 500 CE, Palladius, Opus agriculturae 4.9.5:

     Nunc melones serendi rarius: distent inter se semina pedibus duobus, locis subactis, vel pastinatis, maxime arenis.

     Now melons are to be sown more rarely: let the seeds be two feet distant, in places well wrought and pastinated, especially in sandy soils.

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	mēlō	mēlōnēs
Genitive	mēlōnis	mēlōnum
Dative	mēlōnī	mēlōnibus
Accusative	mēlōnem	mēlōnēs
Ablative	mēlōne	mēlōnibus
Vocative	mēlō	mēlōnēs

Related terms

• mālum
• mālus
• mēlopepō

Descendants

• Asturian: melón
• Catalan: meló
• Old French: melon
  • → Middle Dutch: melone
    • Afrikaans: meloen
    • Dutch: meloen
  • → Middle English: mē̆loun, melon, milon
    • → English: melon, mellon
      • → Japanese: メロン
      • → Korean: 멜론 (mellon)
      • → Welsh: melon
  • French: melon
  • Norman: m'lon
• Galician: melón
• Italian: melone
  • → German: Melone
• Occitan: melon
• Piedmontese: mëlon, mlon
• Portuguese: melão
• Romagnol: mlon, mlôn, mlōn
• Sicilian: miluni
• Spanish: melón

References

• “mēlo”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• melo in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• melo in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

Latvian

Verb

melo

1. inflection of melot:
   1. second/third-person singular present indicative
   2. third-person plural present indicative
   3. second-person singular imperative
2. (with the particle lai) third-person singular imperative of melot
3. (with the particle lai) third-person plural imperative of melot

Old High German

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *melu.

Noun

melo n

1. flour

Descendants

• Middle High German: mël
  • Alemannic German: Mël, Mèhl
  • Bavarian: Mej, Möö
  • Central Franconian:

    Hunsrik: Meel

    Luxembourgish: Miel

  • German: Mehl
  • Rhine Franconian:

    Pennsylvania German: Mehl

  • Vilamovian: maoł
  • Yiddish: מעל (mel)

Portuguese

Verb

melo

1. first-person singular present indicative of melar

Serbo-Croatian

Participle

melo (Cyrillic spelling мело)

1. neuter singular active past participle of mesti