Emily Dickinson Lexicon

SET'TLE-MENT, n.

1. The act of settling, or state of being settled.
2. The falling of the foul or foreign matter of liquors to their bottom; subsidence.
3. The matter that subsides; lees; dregs. [Not used.] – Mortimer. [For this we use Settlings.]
4. The act of giving possession by legal sanction. My flocks, my fields, my woods, my pastures take, / With settlement as good as law can make. – Dryden.
5. A jointure granted to a wife, or the act of granting it. We say, the wife has a competent settlement for her maintenance; or she has provision made for her by the settlement of a jointure.
6. The act of taking a domestic state; the act of marrying and going to housekeeping.
7. A becoming stationary, or taking a permanent residence after a roving course of life. – L'Estrange.
8. The act of planting or establishing, as a colony; also, the place, or the colony established; as, the British settlements in America or India.
9. Adjustment; liquidation; the ascertainment of just claims, or payment of the balance of an account.
10. Adjustment of differences; pacification; reconciliation; as, the settlement of disputes or controversies.
11. The ordaining or installment of a clergyman over a parish or congregation.
12. A sum of money or other property granted to a minister on his ordination, exclusive of his salary.
13. Legal residence or establishment of a person in a particular parish or town, which entitles him to maintenance if a pauper, and subjects the parish or town to his support. In England, the poor are supported by the parish where; they have a settlement. In New England, they are supported by the town. In England, the statutes 12 Richard II. and 19 Henry VII. seem to be the first rudiments of parish settlements. By statutes 13 and 14 Charles II. a legal settlement is declared to be gained by birth, by inhabitancy, by apprenticeship, or by service for forty days. But the gaining of a settlement by so short a residence produced great evils, which were remedied by statute 1 James II. Blackstone.
14. Art of settlement, in British history, the statute of 12 and 13 William III. by which the crown was limited to his present majesty's house, or the house of Orange. – Blackstone.