mettle \MET-l\, noun:
1. Courage and fortitude.
2. Disposition or temperament.
Who is so ignorant as not to know that knights-errant are beyond all jurisdiction, their only law their swords, while their charter is their mettle and their will is their decrees?
-- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
"--must do something to justify your existence," Marlene was saying to Tim, "and now is the chance to show your mettle."
-- Muriel Spark, The Bachelors
Mettle was used interchangeably with the material metal until the early 1700s. Mettle continued to be used in the figurative sense of "stuff of which a person is made" even as the spellings diverged.
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