Connotations of the word ‘Settle’

The word ‘Settle’ has an interesting connotation.

There’s a difference between “If I settle with you”, or “if I settle for you.”

The mind plays the possible phrases out, “I settle for less” is common. Thusly if I say “I settle for you”, it sounds as if I said I settle for less. Which an inferential listener might assume a negative connotation.

If “I settle with you”, it may also sound negative and directing at the person. Vice If one says “I settle down with you”, in which the down removes aggressive tenses of the words by being in-between ‘settle’ and ‘you’. Sounding more cooperative and working towards a common goal. That connotation spreads to the word settle and makes the listener think of settling down like a nice home or a nice place to call home.

The word “down” becomes the subject of discussion, rather than you or the relationship between.

It also sounds negative to say the past tense; “I settled for you” or “I settled with you”. – Because it has the connotation that future potentials are limited or cut short.

Settled implies past tense as if having to give up things to be settled to be with you.

-or it references the past tense and being settled with you only for a moment and that the moment is temporary and passing.

So basically, Settle down is probably the only positive sounding version.

In other terms, colonization can be viewed as settling. To create a settlement, would make someone a settler. To settle here or there is to “set” or settle things.

Sometimes the word Settle can also relate to the use of ending things or finishing them. Like settling our disputes or “I’ll settle the bill”.

Though, if someone is upset then telling them to “calm down” or “settle down” may not help. It might remind them that you’re trying to limit them from expression or getting something out, or that you’re denying their reality or emotions. Not a great way to diffuse a situation.

-And settling somehow implies enough while not having enough. in a contemporary sense. It’s almost paradoxical. To settle is to say you have enough. But to settle also implies that there’s more.

Here’s AI with the etymology;

So to put in it’s place or establish, is the essence of settle. To set. That is the origin or etymology of it.

Yet it’s use, as described above is varied and nuanced. The word has evolved and it evolves along side the use of other words. Words themselves are evolutionary things that change over time and they change with other words.

As Iron Sharpens Iron. Words too sharpen words.

This is most evident in the poetic prose of poetry. How one word in a sentence can influence the others, and how language changes and evolves over time, to capture the thing we call ‘meaning’ as if we’re grasping smoke with tennis rackets for hands. To encapsulate a feeling or experience like describing the taste of a strawberry to one who is blind to it’s colored existence. Can you paint red with your eyes closed? What if you never saw?

As you see in my writing above, I playfully wrote some things with candor. If you re-read it again, you might have a different experience or take away.

As Heraclitus says, “”No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man,” The same goes for words, we can read the same word twice and have two different experiences. People can hear the same words and get different experiences. Those two people could be the same person but they’re not the same person. Thusly, someone who read a book the first time may take a new meaning the second. Words and experiences are ever evolving things.

I hope you settled in to the words I’ve written and the thoughts I digitally penned.

Epilogue

The meaning of a simple word is used in so many different ways that you can wield it properly, to tailor your speech like a bespoke suit to wrap around your idiolect.

This may help aid your ability to get your point across, but also know to listen for not your own objectives, but for the combined win-win of all parties.

And don’t forget to enjoy life every now and again, there’s plenty to do or plenty of things that need not be done. I hope you evolved with this passage and words, as much as words evolved with you and your understanding of them -afterall;

Words Mean Things