thickly settled

Meaning

1. 1adjectivecomparableAmerican

   Having many houses and people packed fairly close together in one area.

   Grammar: Can come before a noun (a thickly settled district) or after be (the valley is thickly settled).

   Patterns

   • a thickly settled area
   • be thickly settled

   The road enters a thickly settled district just past the bridge, so watch for children.

   In the nineteenth century, the coastal plain was thickly settled while the hills stayed empty.

   Signs along the highway warn that the next two miles are thickly settled.

Common combinations

a thickly settled area

Speed limits drop in a thickly settled area like this.

thickly settled district

The fire station serves a thickly settled district near the river.

thickly settled region

The old maps show the most thickly settled region lay along the canal.

thickly settled neighborhood

Houses in a thickly settled neighborhood often share a wall.

Synonyms and how they differ

densely populated

It is the standard modern phrase and works in any region, whereas thickly settled sounds local or traditional.

built-up

It focuses on the amount of buildings, not the number of people, and is common in British English.

crowded

It describes people in a space at a given moment, while thickly settled describes how people live in an area over time.

Opposites

Word family

settle verb

to make a home in a place

settlement noun

a place where people have come to live

settler noun

a person who moves to a new area to live

thickly adverb

in a dense way

Commonly confused: thickly settled or thick-set?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “thickly settled”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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