Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who settles in a new region.
- n. One who settles or decides something.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One who settles; particularly, one who fixes his residence in a new colony.
- n. A separator; a tub, pan, vat, or tank in which a separation can be effected by settling. In metallurgy, a tub for separating the quicksilver and amalgam from the pulp in the Washoe process (which see, under
pan ,3). - n. That which seltles or decides anything definitely; that which gives a quietus: as, that argument was a settler; his last blow was a settler.
Wiktionary
- n. someone who settles in a new location, especially one who makes a previously uninhabited place his home
- n. someone who decides something, such as a dispute
- n. UK the person in a betting shop who calculates the winnings
- n. A drink which settles the stomach, especially a bitter drink, often a nightcap.
- n. A vessel, such as a tub, in which something, such as pulverized ore suspended in a liquid, is allowed to settle.
- n. colloquial That which settles or finishes, such as a blow that decides a contest.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. One who settles, becomes fixed, established, etc.
- n. Especially, one who establishes himself in a new region or a colony; a colonist; a planter.
- n. colloq. That which settles or finishes; hence, a blow, etc., which settles or decides a contest.
- n. A vessel, as a tub, in which something, as pulverized ore suspended in a liquid, is allowed to settle.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person who settles in a new colony or moves into new country
- n. a negotiator who settles disputes
- n. a clerk in a betting shop who calculates the winnings
Etymologies
- to settle + -er (Wiktionary)
Examples
“References to Hottentot servants in settler households document one path to survival. 42 Limited loan farm registration in frontier areas indicates another strategy for working within encroaching colonial economic structures.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Belonging in settler society was not necessarily about being "white," or being descended only from Europeans, but rather about claiming relationships in kin networks, which could be accomplished by marriage.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Subordinated women — slaves, freed slaves, or Khoisan — with European husbands, whether church sanctioned or common-law, could live as settler wives. 28 Their children were often included, unremarked upon, in settler family networks. 29”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“To date the role of the NGK in settler society and in colonizing the Cape has received little attention from historians.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Antoinetta Campher's story and family tree are another example of a slave's descendants making space for themselves in settler society.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“The loan farm system enabled continuity in settler land claims.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“Both Basson and Bergh became prominent landowners; their many children married across the ranks of settler society — wealth and status evidently outweighed race to determine belonging in settler society at the end of the seventeenth century. 30”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“This process was contested violently; Khoisan resisted displacement, the appropriation of their livestock and hunting grounds, involuntary servitude in settler households, and subordination in colonial society.”
Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa
“How many generations of these undisturbed forest trees grew and decayed before being seen by the first settler is a matter of pure speculation; how this primeval forest appeared to the hardy pioneers who cleared it from the sites of our present homes, must be to us a subject for interesting reflections.”
“How many generations of these undisturbed forest trees grew and decayed before being seen by the first settler is a matter of pure speculation; how this primeval forest appeared to the hardy pioneers who cleared it from the sites of our present homes, must be to us a subject for interesting reflections. (p. 2)”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘settler’.
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ENVI - drinking water
unconfined aquifer, confined aquifer, artesian aquifer, water catchment, groundwater abstr..., spring water coll..., surface water col..., impounding reservoir, intake water, potable water, treatment plant, drinking water tr... and 79 more...
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European World Systems
europe, colonization, defense, barter, feudalism, gunpowder, technology, guns, domination, lords, monarchs, transition and 250 more...
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Studying Book
scarcity, characterized, respectively, drought, starvation, quotas, eliminate, exclusion, settler, persecution, occupy, decline and 4 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for settler.

ruzuzu Ah, yes, Milosrdenstvi--nothing like building roads to stock up on sheep and ore. Dec 21, 2009
milosrdenstvi If it is somewhere, say, like Catan. Dec 21, 2009
gangerh Would the settled agree? Dec 21, 2009
seanahan In America, I would say that settler has a generally positive connotation. Dec 21, 2009
ymedad As, indeed, the term "settler" is most usually employed in a pejorative sense, meaning one who is foreign and does not belong, my noun for a Jewish resident in Judea and Samaria, portions of the Jewish national homeland not under Israel's political sovereignty is "revenant", an adoption of the French revenir which means to return after a long absence. Oh, and a "settlement" is just but a "community", or a "town", a "village", a "city". Dec 21, 2009