This might be the lamest nitpick I've ever written, but isn't a Battle Royale an individual/small team fight to the death? This is just a small fight between two teams.
I clicked the link really curious to learn why 60 knights engaged in a Battle Royale Death Match (every man for himself, fight to the death). I was disappointed to learn the click bait title had taken me in and all I would get to read about was a 30 on 30 arranged battle.
Its recent usage is largely an allusion to the film from 2000. The title refers to a contest where members of a graduating high school class are pitted against each other to the death.
people try to nail down definitions of words that are only loosely defined. You know the fight scenes in movies where a fight breaks out in a bar, and before you know it, everybody is fighting everybody? That's a battle royale. Is it a fight to the death? not usually. Have some people used that phrase to refer fights to the death? yes.
lower case, battle royale is just an expression in English that anybody is free to use to describe a conflict that had some aspect of getting out of control.
> ...and they are not organized into teams. Here, the title qualifies Battle Royale...
> lower case, battle royale is just an expression in English that anybody is free to use to describe a conflict that had some aspect of getting out of control.
Anybody is free to use any word in way they want. However, using words in common ways will help prevent confusion. For example, "battle royale" (or "battle royal") is mainly used to refer to "A fight involving three or more individuals, teams, or factions; fought until one person, team, or faction is left standing" (from Wiktionary). Using battle royale to mean something else will lead to confusion among most English speakers.
> but in this incident they were organized in teams
And this particular discussion about the article was about the misuse of the term Battle Royale, specifically the use of term to describe combat with two teams instead of many.
Yep, and it requries computers. It is clearly a use avount la lettre. The title is to be understood as a play on words: "Battle Royale" == "Fight in the most royal manner possible". -- Whether it's a good play on words is for the reader to judge, though.
Does it? Wrasslin' has had Battle Royals as long as I've been alive and conscious and I'm sure -- although I can't find the reference now -- that English bare-knuckle boxers used to have Battle Royals in the mercantile period for non-trivial money.
This is not essential for my main point. I did not want to be exhaustive. I only wanted to stress the avount la lettre aspect. As long as we have no medieval source for the term, you may choose whatever more or less contemporary meaning that seems fit as the modern scopus of the word play.
