settlement
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
10 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "settlement", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "settlement" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "settlement" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
settlement is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act of settling. Pronounced /ˈsɛ.təl.mənt/. It ranks #3,085 in English word frequency. Often confused with settlements.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | settlement |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɛ.təl.mənt/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #3,085 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for settlement is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɛ.təl.mənt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,085 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 12 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 14 documented wrong-spelling variants for settlement, with forms such as "esttlement", "setlement", and "setltement". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "settlements", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From settle + -ment. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is settlement, spelled S-E-T-T-L-E-M-E-N-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The act of settling.
- 2The state of being settled.
- 3A colony that is newly established; a place or region newly settled.
- 4A community of people living together, such as a hamlet, village, town, or city; a populated place.
- 5A site where people used to live together in ancient times; an ancient simple kind of village.
- 6The gradual sinking of a building. Fractures or dislocations caused by settlement.
- 7The delivery of goods by the seller and payment for them by the buyer, under a previously agreed trade or transaction or contract entered into.
- 8A disposition of property, or the act of granting it.
- 9A settled place of abode; residence; a right growing out of legal residence.
- 10A resolution of a dispute.
- 11A mutual agreement to end a dispute without resorting to legal proceedings, also known as an out-of-court settlement or settling out of court.
- 12An estate or district in Anglo-Indian Bengal where, instead of taking a quota of the year's produce, the government took a fixed sum several times a year from the local cultivators.
Etymology
From settle + -ment.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: esttlement,setlement,setltement,settelment,settleemnt,settlemennt,settlementt,settlemetn,settlemment,settlemnet,settllement,settlmeent,ssettlement,stetlement
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for settlement
Misspelling Variants of "settlement"
Frequency rank: #3,085 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: