Heard on "Aqua Team Hunger Force"

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:24 PM +0800 5/14/09, Randy Alexander wrote:
>On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  "Carl," a white, animated-cartoon character says:
>>
>>  "I gotta _cop a squat_"
>>
>>  and literally squats behind a bush in order to  _take a dump_.
>>
>>
>>  I've known "cop a squat" in BE with the meaning, "have a seat," since
>>  ca.1955.  I heard it used, once, with that same meaning by a white
>>  person, to wit: Richard Belzer, in an episode of Homicide : Life on
>>  the Street, ca.1998.
>>
>>  This is the first time that I've heard it used with a different meaning.
>>
>
>I grew up with that from at least high-school (80s) onward.  Went to
>high-schools in NY state, and Michigan.  College in Massachusetts and New
>Jersey.
>
Curiously, urbandictionary.com and other web slang compendia, which
I'd expect to have the more extreme sense, only give the "have a
seat/sit down" sense plus "sit down to urinate", not "take a dump",
although it's not hard to see how there might have been a broadening
involving the last two.  Apparently, there used to be a coffee shop
in Lancaster, PA called "Cop a Squat"; I assume it was advertising
its comfortable seating options rather than its rest rooms.

LH

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