settler

plural settlers

1. Someone who settles in a new location; especially one who takes up residence in a previously uninhabited place.

   the first settlers of New England

   2 more examples

   The law, which let settlers stay on private land if they had built there without knowing the property belonged to Palestinians or had done so at the state’s direction, was backed by Israel’s most right-wing governing coalition to date.

   2020 June 9, David M. Halbfinger, Adam Rasgon, “Israel Court Rejects Law Legalizing Thousands of Settlement Homes”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 01 Nov 2020

   It was the racist, settler colonialism that created whiteness, that created blackness, half-caste, quarter-caste, octoroon, that saw mixed-race people as a third race. […] This belief was one of the drivers of the ‘protection’ laws that led to the settler government’s theft of children.

   2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021

2. Someone who decides or settles something, such as a dispute.

   The paddles were enormously versatile, serving as radio-antenna masts, shovels, ice prods, snow knives, and potential argument settlers—whoever had one in his hand at the time would win.

   1989 May, Jeff MacInnis, “Braving the Northwest Passage”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 592

3. colloquialThat which settles or finishes, such as a blow that decides a contest.
4. UKThe person in a betting shop who calculates the winnings.
5. A drink which settles the stomach, especially a bitter drink, often a nightcap.

   [H]aving got out the rum bottle for a quiet “settler” just as the victim of his fascinations glided through the carefully adjusted door, he had been persuaded to go on drinking.

   1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 80

6. A vessel, such as a tub, in which something, such as pulverized ore suspended in a liquid, is allowed to settle.

   First, there will be little reaction in the settler so that the concentrations of soluble constituents in the recycle stream are the same as those in the bioreactor.

   2011, C. P. Leslie Grady, Jr.; Glen T. Daigger; Nancy G. Love, Biological Wastewater Treatment, Third Edition, page 189