mettlesome

American  

[met-l-suhm] / ˈmɛt l səm /

adjective

1. spirited; courageous.

---

Etymology

Origin of mettlesome

First recorded in 1655–65; mettle + -some ¹

Explanation

If you're spirited and brave, you're mettlesome. It takes a mettlesome person to hike the Appalachian Trail all alone. The adjective mettlesome is a great way to describe someone who's full of pride or courage — although it's also an old-fashioned, somewhat literary way to do it. Many classic children's books feature mettlesome main characters, like Huckleberry Finn and Ann of Green Gables. Though it sounds a bit like the nosy word meddlesome, mettlesome is rooted instead in mettle, "the stuff of which someone is made."

Example Sentences

The weather does its best to massacre his New Yorkers, tormenting them with frigid winters and suffocating summers; their response to the vital challenge is to show off the mettlesome resilience of the human animal.

From The Guardian • Mar. 17, 2013

That left Andsnes' athletic, mettlesome and exciting performance of the Brahms to lift the concert out of the ordinary.

From Chicago Tribune • Feb. 18, 2011

The movement's unacknowledged leader, if such a mettlesome mood can be said to have one, is surely Sean Brock, the brilliant young chef of McCrady's Restaurant in Charleston, S.C.

From Time • Oct. 27, 2010

A shy, passive, recessive figure has been transformed into an active, mettlesome, gender-challenging presence, a poet in control of her art and environment, and fully conscious of the mechanics of personal myth.

From New York Times • May 13, 2010

She was a fearless rider, and it gave the young man pleasure to be commissioned to pick out an animal at once gentle and mettlesome for the use of his young mistress.

From Robert Tournay A Romance of the French Revolution by Sage, William