“Turning from his father’s trade of corset-making, [Thomas] Paine tried his hand at business, met and impressed Benjamin Franklin in London, sailed to America, and there found his true metier [ˈmɛtjeɪ] as a pamphleteer and radical.” — Matthew Redmond, The Conversation, 9 Oct. 2025

métier
noun [ˈmɛtjeɪ]
Métier, sometimes styled metier, is a formal word that refers to something that a person does very well.

Métier is sometimes translated from its original French as “job” or “career” but in that language it more accurately refers to the trade or profession in which one works.

In English we tend toward a narrower meaning for métier, referring either to a job for which one is perfectly suited or a particular field in which one is extremely skilled.

English