set down

See also: setdown

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

set down (third-person singular simple present sets down, present participle setting down, simple past and past participle set down)

1. (idiomatic, transitive) To write.

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

   • 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:

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

2. (transitive) To fix; to establish; to ordain.
   • 1594–1597, Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Will[iam] Stansby [for Matthew Lownes], published 1611, →OCLC, (please specify the page):

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

3. (transitive, especially British) To place, especially on the ground or a surface; to cease carrying; to deposit; to allow passengers to alight.
   • 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:

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

4. (aviation, ambitransitive) To land.

   The bush pilot set down on a sandbar.

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

     “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———”

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

     "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?"

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

   I set him down as an idiot.

Synonyms

• (deposit): drop off

Translations

to place on a surface

French: déposer (fr) Galician: pousar (gl) German: hinsetzen (de), hinlegen (de), ablegen (de), absetzen (de) Greek: Ancient: κατατίθημι (katatíthēmi) Haitian Creole: depoze Irish: scaoil anuas Italian: deporre (it), posare (it) Portuguese: pousar (pt) Sorbian: Lower Sorbian: sajźaś impf, sajźiś pf Spanish: posar (es) Yiddish: אַוועקלייגן (avekleygn)

Anagrams

• down-set, downest, downset