squat
squat
Old French
“A word for pressing flat that learned to mean sitting, then stealing shelter.”
Old French 'esquatir' meant to press down or crush flat, built from the prefix 'es-' and 'quatir' (to flatten). 'Quatir' traced back to Vulgar Latin coactire, from Latin 'coactus,' the past participle of 'cogere,' meaning to force together or compress. The word arrived in English around 1350, carrying its crushing sense intact.
By the 15th century, 'squat' had narrowed to describe the position of someone crouching with knees bent, pressed close to the ground. The shift from 'compressed thing' to 'compressed person' was logical and quick. A squatting figure is a body that has pressed itself flat against the earth.
The legal and social sense emerged much later. By the 1800s in Britain and America, a 'squatter' was someone who occupied land without legal title. Australia took up this usage during the 19th century, where squatters became a recognized and sometimes powerful class of graziers who settled unallocated Crown land.
The exercise meaning is the youngest of all. 'Squat' as a deliberate athletic movement was codified in strength training literature of the early 20th century. The word had traveled from Latin compulsion to French flattening to English crouching to illegal occupation to Olympic lifting in six centuries.
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Today
Squat now lives in at least three registers without collision. In the gym it is a measure of strength, the foundational movement of powerlifting. On the street it means zero, nothing, the total absence of worth. In law and housing it still means unlawful occupation of someone else's space.
These meanings share the same ancestor: the idea of pressing down, of being low, of contact with the ground. Whether you are occupying nothing, lifting heavy, or crouching in the dark, the floor is the word's native element.
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