squat

   1. to defecate

   The posture adopted and perhaps referring to the dialect meaning, to squirt:

    The authorities were trying to teach the people not to squat behind their huts. (M. McCarthy, 1967)

   For females, a squat may mean urination only.

   Some figurative use, as:

    ... the 52 has told me squat about the enemy now facing me. (Coyle, 1987 — the 52 is an American staff officer responsible for obtaining and disseminating information about the enemy)

   A squatter is a lavatory without a pedestal seat:

    I vowed never again to travel on a heap of coal slag, never again to stay in a hotel that smelt like a morgue, never again to use a squatter which belched up its contents over the user. (Dalrymple, 1989)

   2. to occupy (a building or land) by trespass

   Squatters' rights is an English legal concept dating from the social and economic need in the Middle Ages to see land and buildings, vacated and ownerless through plague, brought back into productive use. The verb is used both transitively:

    Hobo punks hop trains, squat abandoned buildings, collect welfare, and dumpster food. (Esquire, January 1994)

   and intransitively:

    She was working... to identify and locate people who are homeless or squatting in abandoned buildings. (Philadelphia Enquirer, 17 December 1989)

   A squat is such a trespass, or the property in which it happens:

    ... they eventually discovered his body in some squat. (B. Forbes, 1989)

   A squatter is someone who so trespasses:

    Squatters of empty, unused houses may be evicted after a summary hearing at which they cannot defend themselves and may be imprisoned if they refuse to move within 24 hours. (Kindred Spirit, Autumn 1994)

    except in New Zealand, where it meant a sheep farmer (Sinclair, 1991).