sett

Pluralsetts

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The system of connected underground tunnels that forms a badger's home.

   The badgers had occupied the same sett for several generations.

   Researchers watched the foxes that sometimes share a badger's sett.

   Similarburrow, den, earth

   Note

   The everyday word set, given a second t: the doubled spelling keeps technical senses like this one apart from the common word, and it serves the weaver's, mason's and miner's senses too. Badger sett is the usual pairing, and the plural is setts. David Kavanagh's A Country Pillow Book (2006) shows the scale: some 4,500 setts were gassed between 1975 and 1982, and an average one held up to fifteen animals.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A small block of quarried stone, cut square, that is laid to pave roads or to edge paths.

   Like a paving brick, but cut from solid stone rather than baked from clay.

   The lane was paved with worn granite setts that glistened after rain.

   A mason trimmed each sett to fit snugly against its neighbors.

   Similarcobble, cobblestone, paver

   Note

   The mason's sense, and the one most readers meet underfoot. Setts are cut and dressed, unlike the naturally rounded cobblestone they are often mistaken for. Belgian block is a synonym. Granite is the classic material. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica records Aberdeen exporting granite setts, and Joseph Conrad hears hoofs clatter on them in A Personal Record (1912). D. H. Lawrence paves a market-square with them in Women in Love.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The repeating design that a particular arrangement of colored threads produces in a Scottish tartan.

   The mill recorded every clan sett in a leather-bound pattern book.

   Collectors can date a kilt by studying the sett of its tartan.

   Similarpattern

   Note

   A tartan's identity lies in its sett: the fixed order of colored warp and weft threads, repeated in both directions. Sett and tartan are not interchangeable. In J. Charles Thompson's introduction to James Grant's Scottish Tartans in Full Color (2012), Lowland houses and Highland clans have setts, and families within clans add their own. Dress and Hunting tartans then branch out from these. The sett is the pattern, and the tartan is the cloth that carries it.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The number of warp ends per inch in a piece of woven cloth.

   The pattern called for a sett of sixty ends per inch.

   Loosening the sett gave the linen a softer, more open weave.

   Similarsley

   Note

   Thread density as weavers count it. More ends per inch packs the cloth tighter and stiffens it, while fewer opens the weave and lets it drape. Sley is a synonym. Keep it apart from the reed count, which gives half the figure. When a draft quotes a sett, check whether it means ends or splits before threading the loom.

5. 5
   nounEnglandcountable

   The density of slots in a loom's reed, measured per inch and equal to half the density of lengthwise threads.

   The draft specified a sett of thirty splits per inch.

   Doubling the threads through each dent halves the sett relative to the ends.

   Note

   An English weaving usage that counts the loom rather than the cloth: the splits, or dents, of the reed per inch. Two warp ends are usually drawn through each dent, so the number comes out at half the warp-ends count. In an English draft, a sett of thirty may therefore describe a sixty-end cloth.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A mine or group of mines held and worked under lease.

   The miners renewed their sett when the old lease expired.

   Royalties on the sett were paid to the landowner each quarter.

   Note

   In mining the word names the leased holding, not the ore inside it: a tract of ground with boundaries, worked on terms agreed with the landowner. That is why a surveyor could treat it as surface territory. The Mining Magazine of 1857 tells the dialer to run a north–south line "in any convenient part of the sett."

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A collection of pumps installed and working together within a mine.

   The mine's sett ran day and night to hold back the rising water.

   A failure in the sett left the deepest galleries flooded.

   Note

   Here the word keeps its plain sense of a group, applied to the pumps that keep a mine dry. It usually appears as sett of pumps and is sized by diameter. The Mining Engineer of 1898 describes sinking resumed with an 18-inch sett in one pit and a 24-inch sett in another. Do not confuse it with the leased mine, which shares the spelling and the trade.

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