Dr. Robert R. Johnson, Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Michigan Technological discusses metis.
The one kind of translation of the tern that is used particularly by the French duo Vernant and Detienne, who wrote the definitive book on metis, call it cunning intelligence.
Metis is a form of knowledge and it’s a form of knowledge that is immediately linked with action. So that it’s not just knowledge for knowledge’s sake, it’s knowledge for doing sake and the doing is the cunning.
The doing helps you solve a problem to deal with a situation to make something happen and do it in ways that might not have been readily thought about or thought of or practiced. Another word that would arise in the renaissance that comes right with cunning intelligence is wit. So it’s the ability to be able to act in the moment.