What is "mettle"

Usage examples of "mettle".

Gordon Wright was of so kindly and candid a nature that it is hardly conceivable that this remark should have been framed to make Bernard commit himself by putting him on his mettle.

You must know that men of his type, accustomed as he is to being courted and flattered, are put very much on their mettle by a rebuff from any female who has not been so foolish as to pick up the handkerchief he has carelessly tossed towards them.

The older generation in the persons of Lady Galton, Kent, and Sennet, seemed to be proving their mettle tonight.

A glance at the animals filled Taran with despair, for they seemed unspirited, of no great mettle, and he wished for the swift-footed Melynlas now grazing peacefully at Caer Dallben.

Angantyr, a foe whose mettle they had duly tested, they proceeded to recover possession of a priceless treasure, a magic dragon ship named Ellida, which Aegir, god of the sea, had once given to Viking in reward for hospitable treatment, and which had been stolen from him.

Expert at the art of renovating antebellum mansions to their original splendor, Burnell Construction had proven its mettle once again.

His successor, Edward of Caernarvon, had little of the mettle of his father, and retreated to London within the month, where he soon concerned himself with his own pleasures and the advancement of his favorites.

Nevertheless, to-day as then, in the coeducational institution she is more consciously on her mettle than the man.

The abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty and encouragement of the Fenian Raids by the American people had put the Canadians on their mettle and stiffened their backbone, so that neither retaliatory threats or honeyed allurements had any effect in changing their minds from carving out their own destiny under the broad folds of the Union Jack.

Now it seemed the Gepids were again brashly testing our mettle, and not far away from the first place they had tried it.

What am I to do, deny you when you pluck the gutstrings of my manly mettle with your silken pleas?

In Laos, they had already proven their mettle as guerrillas during the Second World War, when they fought on the side of the Lao and the French during the Japanese occupation, and after the war, when, similarly allied, they resisted the Vietminh.

Now though, Trennt gauged his mettle and timed the creep of his trigger finger against a new flatness in the seabound breeze.

I remained at table till the company had all left the room, and when we were alone together I got up and looked him straight in the face, and went out, walking towards Sheveningue, sure that he would follow me if he were a man of any mettle.

He began to sneer at the slow jog-trot and absence of enterprise which made the fellows he had left shine so poorly in comparison with the Goshawk, but a sight of two cavaliers in advance checked his vanity, and now to overtake them he tasked his fat Flemish mare with unwonted pricks of the heel, that made her fling out and show more mettle than speed.