set down

present singular third person sets down · participle present setting down

1. idiomatictransitiveTo write.

   I set down this account so others may benefit from my experience.

   1 more example

   Some rules were to be set down for the government of the army.

   1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the [Sheldonian] Theater

2. transitiveTo fix; to establish; to ordain.

   This law we may name eternal, being that order which God […] hath set down with himself, for himself to do all things by.

   [1594], Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Iohn Windet, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page)

3. UKespeciallytransitiveTo place, especially on the ground or a surface; to cease carrying; to deposit; to allow passengers to alight.

   They rowed about a League; and then ſet me down on a Strand.

   1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “The Author Sets out as Captain of a Ship. […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume II, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part IV (A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms), page 159

   Synonyms: drop off

4. ambitransitiveaeronauticsTo land.

   The bush pilot set down on a sandbar.

5. obsoletetransitiveTo humiliate.

   "To snub people! to set them down! to be rude to them! to make them feel small! Surely that’s the lifework of a hero?"

   1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part I (Cambridge), page 131

   1 more example

   “I,” said Binet, “once saw a piece called the ‘Gamin de Paris,’ in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell, who had seduced a working girl, who at the end———”

   1886, Gustave Flaubert, chapter XIV, in Eleanor Marx-Aveling, transl., Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners […], London: Vizetelly & Co., […], →OCLC, part II, pages 239–240

6. transitiveTo regard (someone) in a particular way; to put down as.

   I set him down as an idiot.