the.com/settled
The pleasant lie you tell yourself right before the next argument begins.
means Brought to a state of stability, resolution, or calm — whether describing a dispute that's been resolved, a person who's grown stable, or a place where people have put down roots.
from From Old English 'setlan,' to seat or place, built on 'setl' — a seat or dwelling-place (a cousin of the modern word 'settle,' the long wooden bench). The thread running through all its senses is the image of coming to rest: putting something down where it stays, the way a sediment sinks or a body lowers into a seat. From that literal sitting grew the figurative settling — of arguments, of nerves, of frontier land — all of them the act of making something finally stop moving.
- legal weight
- Settled lawsuits admit nothing, pay anyway
- geology
- Settled ground still sinks for decades
- old usage
- Once meant calming, like wine clearing of sediment
- the irony
- Settled debates rarely stay settled
treaty of westphalia — 1648 peace agreement that settled the thirty years' war in europe
louisiana purchase — 1803 agreement that settled u.s.-france territorial disputes and doubled the nation's size
paris peace accords — 1973 agreement that settled the vietnam war between north and south vietnam