Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Greek myth, a goddess personifying prudence, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and first wife of Zeus.
  • noun The ninth of the planetoids in the order of discovery, first observed by Graham at Markree, Ireland, in April, 1848.
  • noun A genus of crustaceans.
  • noun A genus of mollusks.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun practical intelligence; street smarts.
  • noun A person of mixed European and Aboriginal descent. Often uncapitalized.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person in western Canada who is of Caucasian and American Indian ancestry

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Greek

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French métis. Akin to Spanish mestizo.

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Examples

  • Transgender men, known as metis or eunuchs, were often robbed, beaten and sometimes raped at Maoist checkpoints, and again at government checkpoints, said Pant, head of the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group.

    Durangoherald.com 2010

  • Transgender men, known as metis or eunuchs, were often robbed, beaten and sometimes raped at Maoist checkpoints, and again at government checkpoints, said Pant, head of the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group.

    Stuff.co.nz - Stuff 2010

  • Transgender men, known as metis or eunuchs, were often robbed, beaten and sometimes raped at Maoist checkpoints, and again at government checkpoints, said Pant, head of the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group.

    WTOP / Business / Biz Stories 2010

  • Transgender men, known as metis or eunuchs, were often robbed, beaten and sometimes raped at Maoist checkpoints, and again at government checkpoints, said Pant, head of the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group.

    WTOP / Business / Biz Stories 2010

  • Transgender men, known as metis or eunuchs, were often robbed, beaten and sometimes raped at Maoist checkpoints, and again at government checkpoints, said Pant, head of the Blue Diamond Society, a gay rights group.

    Durangoherald.com 2010

  • Of an inquiring and gregarious nature he went as much among the half-breeds -- or 'metis', as they are called -- and Indians as among the officers of the Hudson's

    The Translation of a Savage, Complete Gilbert Parker 1897

  • Of an inquiring and gregarious nature he went as much among the half-breeds -- or 'metis', as they are called -- and Indians as among the officers of the Hudson's Bay

    The Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Gilbert Parker Gilbert Parker 1897

  • Of an inquiring and gregarious nature he went as much among the half-breeds -- or 'metis', as they are called -- and Indians as among the officers of the Hudson's Bay

    The Translation of a Savage, Volume 1 Gilbert Parker 1897

  • It may be a corruption of Mahomet "Mohammed", or even a combination of two greek words, baphe and metis, meaning 'absorption of knowledge'.

    Blingdom of God 2008

  • Only the uncovered CFL registered on the card, a 1″. metis Says:

    ArmorLite: A CFL Bulb Without The Risk of Toxic Mercury Exposure | Inhabitat 2010

  • First, the book’s concluding chapter is a hymn to metis, the Greek for uncodifiable, practical knowledge.

    Paul Seabright · The Aestheticising Vice: systematic knowledge · LRB 27 May 1999 Paul Seabright 2019

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  • "In Greek mythology, Metis was of the Titan generation and, like several primordial figures, an Oceanid, in the sense that Metis was born of Oceanus and Tethys, of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings. Metis was the first great spouse of Zeus, indeed his equal (Hesiod, Theogony 896) and the mother of Athena, the goddess of the arts and wisdom. By the era of Greek philosophy Metis had become the goddess of wisdom and deep thought, but her name originally connoted "magical cunning" and was as easily equated with the trickster powers of Prometheus as with the "royal metis" of Zeus. The Stoic commentators allegorized Metis as the embodiment of "wisdom" or "wise counsel", in which form she was inherited by the Renaissance."

    - Wikipedia

    January 5, 2008

  • "Usually translated, inadequately, as "cunning," metis is better understood as the kind of knowledge that can be acquired only by long practice at a similar but rarely identical tasks, which requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances."

    - James C. Scott, "Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed"

    January 5, 2008