Melled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Was blended or mingled together with something else ; was intruded into or meddled in another person's business
2. Became mixed up or combined with other things ; became involved in and interfered with someone else's affairs
3. Had been stirred together with something else in a mixture ; had pushed into another's concerns in an unwelcome way

Etymology: "Melled" is simply the past tense and past participle of "mell," so its story is really the story of that verb, which has several unrelated origins that happen to have landed on one spelling. The oldest strand comes from Old English "mǣlan," meaning "to speak, talk," from a Germanic root meaning "meeting, congress," so the sense of speaking and the sense of gathering are closely linked. That root also survives in the German "vermählen," "to wed," which shows how a word for meeting or assembling could drift toward formal agreements and contracts. A second, separate verb comes from Old French "meller" or "mesler," "to mix, mingle," and it is a doublet of "meddle," the same word arriving in English by a different route. This is where "mell" in the sense of mixing or interfering comes from, and it is why the two words look and sound so alike. A third strand is a variant of "maul," the heavy hammer, which gives "mell" the sense of striking or hitting. Each of these threads has its own history, so "melled" can mean mixed, struck, or spoken depending on which "mell" is meant.