settlement

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈset.əl.mənt/, US /ˈset̬.əl.mənt/^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English settle + -ment.^[2][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The settling and clarifying of a liquid, and the act of fixing or steadying: the 1620s in Etymonline and the early 17th century in the Shorter Oxford.^[2][4] The placing of things in a fixed position is from 1648 in the OED and MWU.^[5][3]

Semantic evolution

Establishment of a person in life, marriage or a post is from 1651,^[5] and legal residence in a parish, giving a right to poor relief, from 1662.^[5] A colony, a tract of country newly settled, is from the 1690s,^[2] and a small frontier village from 1827, in American English.^[2] The legal settlement of property, as on marriage or divorce, is from the 1670s,^[2] the payment of an account by 1729,^[2] and the decision of a question or dispute by 1777.^[2][5] Subsidence of a building is from the late 18th century.^[4] In the late 19th century Christian socialists used it for a house in a poor district where middle-class reformers lived among the working class, hence settlement house.^[2]

Timeline

• 1620s – clarifying, steadying.^[2]
• 1648 – fixing in place.^[5][3]
• 1662 – legal residence in a parish.^[5]
• 1670s – a settlement of property.^[2]
• 1690s – a colony.^[2]
• 1729 – payment of an account.^[2]
• 1777 – the decision of a dispute.^[2][5]
• 1827 – a frontier village.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An official agreement that ends a dispute.
2. A place where people have come to live, especially one newly built; a small village.
3. The process of people settling in a new place.
4. The payment of money owed.
5. (law) The arrangement by which property is given to someone, or the property itself.
6. The slow sinking of a building or the ground under it.

Word family

• nonsettlement
• outsettlement
• presettlement
• resettlement
• unsettlement
• settlement house
• viatical settlement

Related words

• settler
• settle
• sit

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press