Mettlesome

WORD OF THE DAY

mettlesome / adjective / MET-ul-sum

Definition
1: full of vigor, courageous
2: spirited, ardent, brave

Examples
"My mother was strong, mettlesome—a survivor. We were a lower-middle-class family."
— Patti Smith, quoted in The Guardian, 20 Sep. 2020

"We’re quite brutal and quite cutthroat,” Williams said. “You have to get results. Otherwise, you’ll be kicked off. There’s not enough funding just to keep you on if you’re just not performing and maybe that mentality really drives the athlete continuously.”
— Jonathan Abrams, The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2022

Did You Know?
The 17th-century adjective mettlesome (popularly used of spirited horses) sometimes appeared as the variant metalsome.
That's not surprising.
In the 16th century and for some time after, mettle was a variant spelling of metal—that is, the word for substances such as gold, copper, and iron. (Metal itself dates from the 14th century and descends from a Greek term meaning "mine" or "metal.")
The 16th century was also when metal—or mettle—acquired the figurative sense of "spirit," "courage," or "stamina."
However, by the early 18th century, dictionaries were noting the distinction between metal, used for the substance, and mettle, used for "spirit," so that nowadays the words mettle and mettlesome are rarely associated with metal