to squat

1) To squeeze; to press. Ex. The boy has squat his finger. Used by the vulgar in New England.--Pickering's Vocabulary.

Mr. Todd has this word in his dictionary from Barret (1580): "To bruise or make flat by letting fall." Provincial in the south of England.

2) In the United States, to settle on another's lands, or on public lands, without having a title.--Worcester.

On either side of the bank the colonists had been allowed to squat on allotted portions until the survey of the town should be completed.--Wakefield's Adventures in New Zealand in 1844.