Squat

How to spell squat

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce squat

What does squat mean?

1. verbTo lower the body close to the ground by bending the knees, resting on or near the heels.
2. verbTo live in an empty building or on land without legal permission or payment.
3. adjectiveDisproportionately short and broad in shape; low and stocky.
4. nounA strength exercise in which the body is lowered by bending the knees, then raised again.

Squat in a sentence

• verb

  The gardener had to squat to reach the weeds along the fence.

• verb

  The activists planned to squat the derelict warehouse for the winter.

• adjective

  The cottage was a squat stone building with tiny windows.

• noun

  Her workout plan added one more squat to each set every week.

• verb

  Coaches tell beginners to squat with a straight back when lifting.

• verb

  Developers worried that strangers might squat the empty flats.

Where does squat come from?

Language of origin: French

Squat came into English in the early 1400s from the Old French esquatir, which meant 'to crush down' or 'to flatten', formed from the prefix es- (an intensifying element meaning roughly 'out' or 'completely') and the verb quatir, 'to press flat'. That French verb traces back to the Latin coactare, 'to force together' or 'to compress', itself built on cogere, 'to drive or pack together'. The earliest English sense was literally 'to flatten or crush', and from the idea of pressing a body low to the ground the modern meaning 'to crouch on the heels' developed during the 1500s. By the 1800s the word had picked up its property sense, describing someone who settles on land or in a building without legal right, the squatter pressed low and clinging to a place not their own. The plain four-letter spelling hides this history, and the silent challenge for writers is simply the qu cluster doing the work of a 'kw' sound.

How the word is built

• squat (single Germanic-derived root, no separable affixes; from Old French esquatir 'to crush, flatten')