Settler

How to spell settler

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce settler

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does settler mean?

1. nounA person who moves to a new or sparsely populated region to establish a permanent home there.

Settler in a sentence

• Each settler was granted a plot of land along the river valley.

• The museum exhibit traced the daily hardships faced by every early settler.

Where does settler come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Settler is built on the verb settle, which descends from the Old English setlan, meaning 'to seat', 'to place', or 'to bring to rest', itself formed from setl, an old word for a seat or place to sit. This makes it a thoroughly Germanic word, a close relative of the modern 'seat' and 'saddle', all sharing the ancient idea of placing something down so that it stays put. Over the centuries the verb broadened from 'cause to sit' to 'come to rest', then to 'establish a home' and 'resolve a matter'. The agent suffix -er was added to give 'one who settles', and from the 1600s onward the word attached itself strongly to people who established homes in newly colonised land. The spelling trap is purely the doubled letters and the unstressed ending: writers must remember the double t and the -le that turns into -ler, not -lor.

How the word is built

• settle (from Old English setlan: to seat, to make to rest)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)