[f. SQUAT v.]
1. The action of crushing or flattening. rare.
a. 1400. E. E. Psalter cv. 29. Finees stode and quemed wele, And þe scatthinge [H. swacching, E. sqwattinge; L. quassatio] lefte ilkadele.
1703. R. Neve, City & C. Purchaser, 161. When ’tis laid on Sand, a very little Squating, viz. by jumping upon it with the Heals of ones Shooes will dent it.
2. The action of crouching or sitting close to the ground.
c. 1410. Master of Game (MS. Digby 182), xxxiv. So þat … at þe laste she be abyte with houndes notwithstondynge her rusyng, swattynge, and reiectynge.
1611. Cotgr., Tapissement,… a lurking, squatting, lying close.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), IV. 17. The hare seems to have more various arts … to escape its pursuers by doubling, squatting, and winding.
1782. J. Warton, Ess. Pope, II. x. 166. The squatting down among the dead bodies till Dolon had passed.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 116. The child in squatting or crawling, begins to lean its weight on its hands.
attrib. c. 1645. Howell, Lett., I. xxxii. I do not like those squatting unseemly bold postures upon ones tail.
3. The action or fact of occupying land as a squatter.
1832. New England Mag., III. 199. Tenants … who occupied the land … under that prescriptive tenure which we quaintly term squatting.
1839. Marryat, Diary Amer., Ser. I. II. 75. Squatting, that is taking possession of land belonging to government and cultivating it.
1880. Silver’s Handbk. Australia, 146. But Victorian squatting is no occupation for the man of small capital.
1887. Jessopp, Arcady, Introd. p. xiii. Days when squatting was not unusual.
b. attrib., as squatting district, life, etc.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, II. ii. (1863), 131. At the beginning of the revolutionary war, Wodgate was a sort of squatting district.
1847. J. D. Lang, Cooksland, 268. The large extent of land occupied by each Squatting Station.
1859. Cornwallis, New World, I. 155. Stations now were very different to what they had been in the early stage of squatting life.
1880. Gentl. Mag., CCXLVI. 64. He … is now largely engaged in squatting pursuits in Queensland.
