mela

M3E1L1A1
/ˈmeɪlə/

noun

A Hindu religious festival.

Less commonFirst used 19th c.Scrabble 6

Meanings

nounmela (plural melas)

plural melas

  1. A Hindu religious festival.
  2. A South Asian fair.First known use 19th c.

    Every year there was a mela in the small village where Jutimala lived and Khitish would send three workers to set up a stall there.

    2011, Arupa Patangia Kalita, translated by Deepika Phukan, The Story of Felanee
    1 more example

    Kalua was a man of unusual height and powerful build: in any fair, festival or mela, he could always be spotted towering above the crowd—even the jugglers on stilts were usually not so tall as he.

    2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin, published 2015, page 53

Origin

  1. Sanskritमेलक
  2. Hindiमेला
  3. Urduمیلہ
  4. Englishmela

From Urdu میلہ (mela)/Hindi मेला (melā), from Sanskrit मेलक (melaka).

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with mela

All rhymes →

Sounds the same

mailer (non-rhotic pronunciations)

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

mela. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mela

MLA

“mela.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mela. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mela,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mela.

Source: mela on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.