claim-jumping

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

claim-jumping (uncountable)

1. (historical, Australia, Western US) The act of one who jumps a claim.
   • 1892, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor:

     When he told us of a man in a pew, of the change in the bride’s manner, of so transparent a device for obtaining a note as the dropping of a bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and of her very significant allusion to claim-jumping—which in miners’ parlance means taking possession of that which another person has a prior claim to—the whole situation became absolutely clear. She had gone off with a man, and the man was either a lover or was a previous husband—the chances being in favour of the latter.