settler
Pluralsettlers
- 1Someone who moves to make a home in a new region, especially one previously uninhabited; a colonist.
European settlers cleared the forest to plant wheat and corn.
Under the Homestead Act, each settler was promised 160 acres of land.
Similarcolonist, pioneer, homesteader, colonizer
Oppositenative
Note
Built from settle plus the agent suffix -er, it means simply one who settles, and every other meaning of the word is formed the same way. In current political writing it often works as a modifier, as in settler colonialism, and in reporting on Israeli building on land belonging to Palestinians it names people whose presence is itself disputed. Context decides whether it reads as neutral history (the first settlers of New England) or as a charged term.
- 2Someone who decides or resolves a matter, such as a dispute or disagreement.
The veteran mediator earned a reputation as a settler of difficult labor disputes.
In our family, Grandma was always the settler of quarrels at holiday dinners.
Similararbiter, arbitrator, mediator, peacemaker, conciliator
Oppositeinstigator, troublemaker
- 3
- 4A drink taken to calm the stomach, especially a bitter one, often as a nightcap.
The bartender suggested an amaro as a settler after the rich dinner.
He poured himself a settler, hoping it would quiet his stomach before sleep.
Oppositeaperitif
Note
The word names a job rather than a drink: settle plus -er, so whatever calms the stomach qualifies, from a bitter to a glass of rum. In Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), a man gets out the rum bottle for "a quiet settler" and is then persuaded to go on drinking. Like nightcap, it takes an article or a modifier: a settler, a quiet settler.
- 5The employee in a betting shop who calculates the winnings owed on each bet.
Before computers, every betting shop employed a settler to work out complicated accumulator payouts.
The settler double-checked the each-way bet before handing over the cash.
Note
A British betting-shop job title. Here the thing being settled is a bet, so the word is a trade use of the one who resolves a matter. The settler works out what a winning slip pays, which matters most for complicated bets such as accumulators and each-way wagers. Outside British betting, readers may not recognize the term.
- 6A vessel, such as a tub or tank, in which solid particles suspended in a liquid are allowed to sink and separate.
The slurry from the crusher flows into a settler, where the heavier ore sinks out.
Each settler at the treatment plant holds several thousand gallons of cloudy water.
Note
An engineer's word as much as a miner's. Besides tubs for crushed ore, it names a tank in a wastewater plant where solids drop out of the flow. Grady, Daigger and Love's Biological Wastewater Treatment (2011) uses it alongside the bioreactor and the recycle stream. In that setting it is a countable equipment term, the settler, like clarifier or tank.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the verb "settle" combined with the suffix "-er."