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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 Grover Smith, editor, 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.
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.
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 Greekμηλοπέπων(mēlopépōn, “melon”), probably with influence from μῆλον(mêlon, “apple”). See mālum and mālus
“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.