Etymologically
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settlement

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 16 October 2026 at 00:37. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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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

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