verb. (common).—1. To knock down; TO DO FOR (q.v.).—GROSE. TO SETTLE ONE’S HASH (see HASH). Hence SETTLER = (1) a knock-down blow; and (2) a finishing stroke.
1819. T. MOORE, Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress, 15. He tipp’d him a SETTLER.
1820. REYNOLDS (‘Peter Corcoran’), The Fancy. ‘King Tims the First,’ sc. ii.
| Jen. That thrust you gave me, Tims, has prov’d a nettler— | |
| Your stab turns out, what I have been,—a SETTLER! |
1836. M. SCOTT, The Cruise of the Midge, 102. Like a cannon-shot right against me, giving me such a SETTLER.
1845. BUCKSTONE, The Green Bushes, ii. 2. Whoever that lady aimed at she has certainly brought down…. She’s settled the SETTLER, and no mistake.
1857. O. W. HOLMES, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, vi. That slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a ‘SETTLER’ in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed.
c. 1866. Music Hall Song, ‘What a fool.’ My darling wife and Ma-in-law Have nearly SETTLED me.
1877. W. H. THOMSON, Five Years’ Penal Servitude, iii. 223. ’E see the engine a coming,… and chucked hisself bang in front of it, and it soon SETTLED ’im.
1888. The Sportsman, 22 Dec. A mistake at the last hurdles proved a complete SETTLER, and he succumbed by six lengths.
2. (thieves’).—To give (or get) penal servitude for life.
