资料来源 : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
(c) The act or process of adjusting or determining;
composure of doubts or differences; pacification;
liquidation of accounts; arrangement; adjustment; as,
settlement of a controversy, of accounts, etc.
(d) Bestowal, or giving possession, under legal sanction;
the act of giving or conferring anything in a formal
and permanent manner.
My flocks, my fields, my woods, my pastures
take, With settlement as good as law can make.
--Dryden.
(e) (Law) A disposition of property for the benefit of
some person or persons, usually through the medium of
trustees, and for the benefit of a wife, children, or
other relatives; jointure granted to a wife, or the
act of granting it.
2. That which settles, or is settled, established, or fixed.
Specifically:
(a) Matter that subsides; settlings; sediment; lees;
dregs. [Obs.]
Fuller's earth left a thick settlement.
--Mortimer.
(b) A colony newly established; a place or region newly
settled; as, settlement in the West.
(c) That which is bestowed formally and permanently; the
sum secured to a person; especially, a jointure made
to a woman at her marriage; also, in the United
States, a sum of money or other property formerly
granted to a pastor in additional to his salary.
3. (Arch.)
(a) The gradual sinking of a building, whether by the
yielding of the ground under the foundation, or by the
compression of the joints or the material.
(b) pl. Fractures or dislocations caused by settlement.
4. (Law) A settled place of abode; residence; a right growing
out of residence; 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. --Blackstone. Bouvier.
{Act of settlement} (Eng. Hist.), the statute of 12 and 13
William III, by which the crown was limited to the present
reigning house (the house of Hanover). --Blackstone.