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Squatter   /skwˈɑtər/   Listen
Squatter

noun
1.
Someone who settles lawfully on government land with the intent to acquire title to it.  Synonyms: homesteader, nester.
2.
Someone who settles on land without right or title.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Squatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... Not very long ago, I was told, the stage was stopped and examined three evenings in succession by disguised horsemen thirsting for his blood. A certain house on the Salinas road, they say, he always passes in his buggy at full speed, for the squatter sent him warning long ago. But a year since he was publicly pointed out for death by no less a man than Mr. Dennis Kearney. Kearney is a man too well known in California, but a word of explanation is required for English readers. Originally ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... friend, "he will say that slavery cannot actually exist in the Territories unless the people desire it, which will offend the South." If Douglas did not answer Lincoln's question he would jeopardize his election as Senator; if he did answer he would offend the South, for his doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" conflicted not only with the interests of slavery, but with his defence of the Dred-Scott decision,—a fact which Lincoln was not slow to point out. Douglas did answer, and the result ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... constructive brain, among which the travellers found him sitting like a masculine version of Albert Durer's Melancholia, his laughing jackass adding tones of mockery to the scene, perched on the bough, looking down, as his master below took to pieces some squatter's crazy clock. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the scattered, miscellaneous reminiscences of men and acts, and things and achievements. In Kansas is a village called Lane, a name which, to the old settler in Kansas, is big with meaning, seeing it brings to life one of the strange, romantic, contradictory, and brilliant characters of the "Squatter Sovereignty" days, when Jim Lane wrought, with his weird and wonderful eloquence, his journeys oft, and his tireless industry, in championing the cause of State freedom. Him and his history, reading like a tale told by a campfire's fitful light, this name embodies. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... had walked far. A squatter's old log-house stood by the green roadside; the wood of the roof and walls was weathered and silver-gray. Before it a clothes-line was stretched, heaved tent-like by a cleft pole, and a few garments were flapping in the wind, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... connected with this colony which adds greatly to its interest to a person coming from a country where "the art preservative of all arts" sends the rays of knowledge throughout the entire length and breadth, to all classes and conditions, illuminating as well the squatter's hut, as the patrician's hall. I allude to the existence of newspapers. Only a person who has been accustomed to them, as we are in the United States, can appreciate the deprivation of this mental food, when placed beyond its reach, on a foreign station like this, where a paper some ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... considered as community property, was used early in 1848 in the purchase of a tract of land, about twenty miles square, at the mouth of Weber Canyon. The sum of $1950, cash, was paid to one Goodyear, who claimed to own a Mexican grant, but who afterward proved to have only a squatter right. The present city of Ogden is on this ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... He may pretend to some right of that natur', but he is so far away that his claim will never trouble old Tom Hutter, who has got possession, and is like to keep it as long as his life lasts. Tom is no squatter, not being on land; I ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... homely, home-made thing, And many a night I rocked it, providin' you would sing; And many a little squatter brought up with us to stay— And so that cradle, for many a year, was never ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton

... old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a squatter's roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared. Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched. The ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Jake. They are more likely to heap brushwood against the door and windows and set it alight, and then shoot us down as we rush out. This hut is not like the one I had to defend against the Iroquois. That was built to repel Indians' attacks; this is a mere squatter's hut." ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... we followed you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes—as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house—sure of you at last—and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills—and when I returned she gave me her bed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... His "Squatter Sovereignty Dogma" was in truth a pirate boat which carried consternation to many an anxious community in the ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke

... few islands in Plum Run which was not flooded over by the spring freshets, and the land was fertile, yet no one had ever been known to live there through a season; this in spite of the fact that Lost Island was known as "squatter's land," open to settlement by ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... any settler failing to report the presence of locust swarms or hopper eggs on his land. Various means are adopted by the land-owner to save what he can from the voracious insects. Men, women and children mount their horses and drive flocks of sheep to and fro over the ground to kill them. A squatter with whom I stayed got his laborers to gallop a troop of mares furiously around his garden to keep them from settling there. All, however, seemed useless. About midsummer the locust lays its eggs under an inch or two ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... time and toil of pitching camp; and it was an unwritten rule that the last man left a neat pile of firewood for the next comer. Rarely a night passed but from half a dozen to a score of men crowded into its shelter. Jacob Kent noted these things, exercised squatter sovereignty, and moved in. Thenceforth, the weary travelers were mulcted a dollar per head for the privilege of sleeping on the floor, Jacob Kent weighing the dust and never failing to steal the down-weight. Besides, he so contrived that his transient guests chopped ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... Bill, repealing the Missouri Compromise and providing for "squatter sovereignty" in the territories in question, outraged the North and led immediately to the forming of the Republican party. It was not long before public sentiment began to make itself felt, and the first demonstration took place in Boston. Anthony Burns was a slave who escaped ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... who had died, suddenly, was a bachelor, and a squatter on a large scale. His spacious country home was now in the hands of the representatives of the Crown, pending its disposal for the benefit of relatives in remote parts of the world who had never ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... heard about Henery and the elephant?" he said. "It was dead funny. Henery was a bushwacker, but clean mad on motorin'. He was wood and water joey at some squatter's place until he seen a motor-car go past one day, the first that ever they had in ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... upon as a squatter: possessing certain rights, of course, and more or less welcome because of sundry lire expended for the temporary use of fishing boats with sails up,—but still an interloper. Now I became one of the thousand families and the million children. These were all in evidence ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "Squatter, don't let the sun go down on you," he read. "That's the third one of those reminders, Calico," he told the horse. "The wording a little different but the sentiment all ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... met many Redskins in the woods, all busy hunting. Game was very abundant—waterfowl on the streams, flights of prairie hens (a sort of grouse), and herds of buck, which constantly crossed our line of march Here and there was a clearing or first attempt at cultivation, round a squatter's log cabin. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... forest came down to the river's edge in a black wall of spruce and balsam. Beyond that edge of the wilderness he knew that no part of Prince Albert intruded. It was possible that across from them was a squatter's cabin; and yet if this were so, and the girl was going to it, why had she told him that she was a stranger in the town? And why had she come to him for the assistance she promised to request of him instead of seeking it of ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood



Words linked to "Squatter" :   interloper, settler, squat, trespasser, intruder, colonist, nester, homesteader



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