squat

Definitions

General English

Cars & Driving

  • noun the dipping of a car’s

    rear end

    occurring during hard

    acceleration

    , due to a load transfer from the front to the rear suspension.

Cricket

  • verb to fail to rise significantly after pitching; keep low
    Citation ‘With some deliveries squatting and others lifting it was clear that survival would be difficult’ (Paul Fitzpatrick, Guardian 3 August 1983)

Law

  • verb to

    occupy

    premises

    belonging to another person unlawfully and without title or without paying rent

Real Estate

  • noun a piece of property that is occupied by squatters
  • verb to

    occupy

    land or buildings without permission of the

    owner

    or other rights

    holder

Sports

  • noun an exercise in

    weightlifting

    in which the lifter raises a

    barbell

    while rising from a crouching position

Origin & History of “squat”

Someone who squats is etymologically ‘forced together’ – and indeed the

verb

originally meant ‘squash, flatten’ in

English

(‘This stone

shall

fall on

such

men, and squat

them

all to powder’, John Wyclif, Sermons 1380). Not until the

early

15th century did the

modern

sense (based on the notion of hunching oneself up

small

and low) emerge. The word was adapted

from

Old French esquatir, a

compound

verb formed from the intensive prefix es- and quatir ‘press flat’.

this

in turn came from

vulgar

Latin *coactīre ‘press together’, a verb based on Latin coāctus, the

past

participle

of cōgere ‘force together’ (from

which

English gets cogent (17th c.)). The adjectival use of squat for ‘thickset’, which preserves

some

of the word’s original connotations of being ‘flattened’, is

first

recorded in 1630. Swat ‘slap’ (17th c.) originated as a variant of squat.
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