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Squabble   /skwˈɑbəl/   Listen
Squabble

verb
(past & past part. squabbled; pres. part. squabbling)
1.
Argue over petty things.  Synonyms: bicker, brabble, niggle, pettifog, quibble.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Squabble" Quotes from Famous Books



... it, and I shall have to swear it. You may be sure Mr. Bartley will subpoena me, if this wretched squabble gets into court." ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... on shouting, 'I'll knock the teeth out of your jaws.' 'I'll trounce you.' Antinous, the most insolent of the wooers, saw the squabble, and he laughed to see the pair defying each other. 'Friends,' said he, 'the gods are good to us, and don't fail to send us amusement. The strange beggar and our own Irus are threatening each other. Let us see that they don't ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... stake depending on Graham's remaining unrecognized, with old Fort Reynolds only six miles ahead, and Silver Shield only twenty-six farther, it would be foolish to become involved in a squabble. But Toomey had been nursing his wrath. Big Ben was not too fond of Cullin, and Geordie found that they were quite bent on making trouble at first opportunity. In spite of the early hour an air of excitement pervaded ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... to do more than glance at the personalities involved in this rather inglorious squabble. Many of the Xenia were personal pin-pricks. Thus several were directed against the musician Reichardt, who, as editor of two journals, had shown strong sympathy with the Revolution. Goethe, the courtier, and Schiller, who had no democratic proclivities, came ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... southward, the appetites of our people increased with the cold, which occasioned disputes in the ship. Even at my own table, Captain Betagh of the marines insisted on a larger allowance in such coarse terms, that I confined him till he wrote me a submissive letter, on which I restored him. But this squabble constrained me to allow an extraordinary meal to the people daily, either of flour or calavances; which reduced our stock of provisions, and consumed our wood and water, proving afterwards of great inconvenience. Whales, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... gentlemen!" said the cardinal, "three men placed hors de combat in a cabaret squabble! You don't do your work by halves. And pray what was ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... progressed, and there was much laughter when the delinquencies of certain fat policemen were related—it was a free-and-easy affair—a sort of midsummer fantasy in municipal politics—a squabble between ward bosses who had become jealous in matters of the distribution of ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... very beginning of the War of the Restoration and for several years afterwards, the principal Dominican military chiefs were engaged in a disgraceful squabble for leadership. As soon as the Spanish forces retired from Santiago the revolutionists, on September 14, 1863, proclaimed the restoration of the republic and set up a provisional government under the presidency of General Jose ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... Doctrine of the President." Russia, it is true, agreed to waive her claims below fifty-four degrees forty minutes and to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea; but the conflicting claims of England in the Northwest remained, and Canning predicted that England would "have a squabble with the Yankees yet in and ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... were laid to Laurette's score. Lilias had a private grievance, because she fancied that Laurette had never been so civil to herself and Dulcie since it was known that their brother was not to inherit the Chase. Gowan, who liked plain speaking, accused Laurette of telling "fiblets"; Bertha had had a squabble over the bathroom, and Prissie ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... the melancholy gentleman), was not this an extremely hard case? To be thus abused, and reviled, and scouted, for merely desiring to be allowed to live in peace, and to have nothing to do with a squabble in which I did not feel in any way interested. But this was not all. I was lampooned, caricatured, and paragraphed in the newspapers, in a thousand different ways. In the first, I was satirized as the fair dealer; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... told to behave themselves decently; and the common people were given to understand that, though an ox would be roasted and wine would run from the gutter for them, they were nevertheless not to attempt to fight or squabble, as it would not be allowed. And every one asked his neighbour in amazement what was the meaning of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... would think you was my brother," said Patty, looking up with a pretty pertness which she had a most bewitching way of putting on. Tom's rejoinder, and the little squabble which they had afterward about where her work-table should stand, and other such matters, may be passed over. At last he was brought to reason, and to anchor opposite his enchantress, the work-table between them; and he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... one name, and one bond of family unity—there is likely to be a great similarity of feeling upon all questions of family pride, especially among people who discuss everything with vehemence, from European politics to the family cook. They may bicker and squabble among themselves,—and they frequently do,—but in their outward relations with the world they act as one individual, and the enemy of one is the enemy of all; for the pride of race and name is very great. There is a family in Rome who, since the memory of man, have not failed to dine ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... everyone thought him, was rough with other men; but like all strong men, he kept his gentleness for women. Montriveau trampled the Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed. Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny of love was their one chance of asserting their power. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... killed, and nine wounded; and the captain in command was in the fust lot, brought down by Leftenant Lyon in a hand-to-hand squabble at the side of the road. Deck fit like a mad rooster. His hoss stood up straight, and gin his rider a chance to git in the cut that ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... rope and resumed his leisurely scratching, prospected his ribs for a few seconds, and then made a sudden dash at Ammona, the orang, grappled with him through the bars, snatched away a little fur, and maintained a fierce scratching and snapping squabble for ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... "Emily Warren, thee can squabble with Richard Morton all day to-morrow after thy amiable fashion, but I'm hankering after some ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... who are all the children he has, in order to be put some way into the world, and see fashions. They are both very ill-bred cubs; and having lived together from their infancy, without knowledge of the distinctions and decencies that are proper to be paid to each other's sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who knows no better than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines, when he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it. This branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either for good or ill: however, have ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... was wondering whether to the Maker of those stars, this earth, that sea, the issue of this business might be more than the issue of a squabble between two ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... Charles IV. from his throne, and the Prince of Peace from his queen's boudoir. Ferdinand VII., the turbulent and restless Prince of Asturias, reaped the immediate profit of his father's abdication; but the two worthless creatures soon called in Napoleon to decide the squabble, which he did in his leonine way by taking the crown away from both of them and handing it over for safe-keeping to his lieutenant brother Joseph. Honor among thieves!—a silly proverb, as one readily sees if he falls into their hands, or reads ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... he never thinks of trying to work backwards to find out the cause. The effect's enough for him! Oh!"—with a sigh—"I do think Peter and Nan are most difficult people to manage. If it were only that—just a lovers' squabble—one might fix things up. But now, just when every obstacle in the world is removed and they could be happily married, Nan must needs decide that it's her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... "We're still in the painful early stages of the squabble. I'll tell you what I'll do, Andrew: I'll compromise with you. Instead of making the bargain you proposed, I'll stand aside and let you go ahead of me into the next world. Then you can come back at your leisure and ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... have a certain point to carry, independent of the lawyers, with my lord, in this agreement of your marriage—about which I am afraid we shall have a warm squabble—and therefore I ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... if the swallows squabble among themselves and fly away Out of the temple, refusing to agree, Then The Most Wanton Birds in all the World They shall be named for ever. ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... of the army, however, sent him back to the colony with a recommendation that the squabble should ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... omits any account of a disagreement, merely saying that since the Chinese had had no one to minister to them the Dominicans assumed that responsibility, but in a letter [105] from the Licentiate Gaspar de Ayala to Philip II, dated from Manila, July 15, 1589, full details of the squabble are given. From this source we learn that the Augustinians had a convent in the village of Tondo in the Chinese district. There they had ministered to the natives in their own language, but had rather neglected their Chinese-speaking parishioners. Consequently after the arrival of the Dominicans ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous

... almost as fatal an influence over modern knowledge as they have a beneficial one over modern taste, had no conception of anything more ancient than the Trojan war, except Chaos. Chaos is a poetic legend, and the Trojan war was the squabble ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... rather than a designation of his actual continuance at his trade up to this time. It is fair to Jonson to remark however, that his adversary appears to have been a notorious fire-eater who had shortly before killed one Feeke in a similar squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among gentlemen and the nobility; it was an impudent breach of the peace on the part of a player. This duel is the one which Jonson described years after to Drummond, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... circumstance of his Majesty's gracious kindness in answering my inquiries at the moment of his greatest danger, by expresses from Carlton House. My carriage also was in town one day in the highest paroxysm of the supposed squabble; but I happened not to be in it, being confined ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... understand the vagaries of public feeling during the war unless they bear constantly in mind that the war in its entire magnitude did not exist for the average civilian. He could not conceive even a battle, much less a campaign. To the suburbs the war was nothing but a suburban squabble. To the miner and navvy it was only a series of bayonet fights between German champions and English ones. The enormity of it was quite beyond most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... off well; the libations were plentiful. The antagonists and their four seconds made it a point of honor that a duel, involving so large a fortune, and the reputation of two men noted for their courage, should not appear the result of an ordinary squabble. No two gentlemen could have behaved better than Philippe and Max; in this respect the anxious waiting of the young men and townspeople grouped about the market-place was balked. All the guests, like true soldiers, kept silence as to the episode which took place at dessert. At ten o'clock that ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... affidavits. The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General, the two great law-officers of the crown, were retained on opposite sides, and took fees—not for an Imperial prosecution, but as petty Queen's Counsel in an inter-parochial squabble. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... expected to control him as they pleased. Admiral Blanco, however, insisted on reversing our positions, offering his services as second in command, in which arrangement I gladly acquiesced. This insignificant squabble would not be worth narrating, but for its bearing on subsequent events; as well as enabling me to confer a pleasing testimony to the patriotic disinterestedness of Admiral Blanco, who is still one of the brightest ornaments of the Republic which he so eminently ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... tuk off the blindfold. 'Twas all dark; could n't see my hand afore me. Crep' 'long the floor. See 't was covered with sawdust. Tuk off m' boots, 'n' got up on m' feet, 'n' walked careful. Did n' dast holler t' Ray. Cal'lated when the squabble come I 'd be ready t' dew business. All t' once I felt a slant 'n the floor. 'T was kind o' slip'ry, 'n' I begun t' slide. Feet went out from under me 'n' sot me down quick. Tried t' ketch holt o' suthin'. Could n't hang on; ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... glad to see him go home early before I got so light-headed with happiness as to squabble over pie with Pink and put a lightning-bug into Tony's lemonade glass. Father went with him, and how good it did seem to see them ride away together through the moonlight down Providence Road to Byrdsville, which lay in the dim distance with its lights making it my huge ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... in no drunken squabble, she knew; and he had arisen from the sickness of it to mount horse and ride—desperately, as his condition told—to claim his own. Through the leagues of desert he had come, through the unfriendly night, with what dim hope in his breast no man might know. Now, sparing the horse that had ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... pursuit, and two of the Tokrooris overtook her, and held on to her tail like bull-dogs, although dragged for some distance, at full gallop through thorns and ruts, until the other men arrived and overpowered the thin, but wiry animal. When slaughtered, there was a great squabble between my men and the Abyssinians, who ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... prince. Moliere himself was a collector, il n'es pas de bouquin qui s'echappe de ses mains,—"never an old book escapes him," says the author of "La Guerre Comique," the last of the pamphlets which flew from side to side in the great literary squabble about "L'Ecole des Femmes." M. Soulie has found a rough catalogue of Moliere's library, but the books, except a little Elzevir, have disappeared. {7} Madame de Maintenon was fond of bindings. Mr. Toovey possesses a copy of a devotional work in red morocco, tooled and gilt, which she ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... that a man must not laugh at his own jokes? Don't you suppose that the man who invented the canard about the Jews in Roumania is laughing at the squabble which he has raised between the Associated Press and the American Press Association, by means of his little joke? And don't you suppose, when the returns of the last election came in, that Mr. TWEED laughed very vigorously at his little joke, called the new election law? If Congress should ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... roamed with torches through the narrow lanes, defying bailiffs, and cutting down burghers at their doors. Now a mob of clerks plunged into the Jewry and wiped off the memory of bills and bonds by sacking a Hebrew house or two. Now a tavern squabble between scholar and townsman widened into a general broil, and the academical bell of St. Mary's vied with the town bell of St. Martin's in clanging to arms. Every phase of ecclesiastical controversy or political strife was preluded by some fierce outbreak in this turbulent, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... that it was certainly not practicable if the competition by the private teachers were suppressed, that otherwise the medical examination might become as great a quackery as the medical degree, and that the whole question was a mere squabble between the big quack and the little one. He unfolds his ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... lieutenancy on board the Royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert, then commanded by the late Adolphus Fitz-Clarence. But in the historically momentous year 1854 there was serious business to be done by Lieutenant—now Commander—Hobart. A diplomatic squabble between France and Russia about the Holy Places in Palestine developed into an angry quarrel between the Emperor Nicholas, France, and England. We went to war with Russia. A magnificent squadron of British first-rates ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... diamond-mine?" Mollie interrupted, feeling that another squabble was in the air. "Did you make a fortune, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... replied the jeweller, "I know you to be a good woman, and won't have a squabble with you about this paltry chest. The giver of the warning is a box-maker, to whom I am about to sell this cursed chest that I wish never again to see in my house, and for this one he will sell me two pretty little ones, in which there will not be space enough even ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... and by sundown Maidie Ray had every assurance that the most popular girl at that moment in Manila army circles was the least popular aboard the Sacramento, and Kate Porter cried herself to sleep after an out-and-out squabble with two of the Band, and the emphatic assertion that if she were Marion Ray she would cut them all dead and go live with her ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... dancing girl. Silly! Nothing but snow and mines in Alaska." Or, again, "Make a fool of old George? What silly piffle! Already done it himself, what, what! Waste her time!" And if she wasn't keen to marry him, had I called him across the ocean to intervene in a vulgar village squabble about social ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... read what is writ over the door? surely it befitteth not fellows who come to us like paupers to wag your tongues at us." "We crave thy pardon, O Fakir,"[FN170] rejoined they, "and our heads are between thy hands." The ladies laughed consumedly at the squabble; and, making peace between the Kalandars and the Porter, seated the new guests before meat and they ate. Then they sat together, and the portress served them with drink; and, as the cup went round merrily, quoth the Porter to the askers, "And you, O brothers ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... lovat's tragedy is over: it has been succeeded by a little farce, containing the humours of the Duke of Newcastle and his man Stone. The first event was a squabble between his grace and the Sheriff about holding up the head on the scaffold—a custom that has been disused, and which the Sheriff would not comply with, as he received no order in writing. Since that, the Duke has burst ten yards ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... to whom the Squire had dictated some letters in connection with the squabble, had quietly made a suggestion—had asked leave to write a letter on approval. For sheer boredom with the whole business, the Squire had ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... late K— J-m-s," was printed in half a dozen places, with a note stating that this duchess, when the head of this lady's family came by his death lately in a fatal duel, never rested until she got a pension for the orphan heir, and widow, from her Majesty's bounty. The squabble did not advance poor Esmond's promotion much, and indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show his face at the commander-in-chief's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that personal bitterness and animosity are out of the question here. We feel we are on a higher plane, and that we must not judge these two men as if they were a couple of little business people who had had a suburban squabble. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... not even the best of scholars, is quite himself before a mixed audience. Whereas in a private conversation a man is glad to receive any new information, no one likes to be told in public that he ought to have known this or that, or that every schoolboy knows it. Then follows generally a squabble, and the best pleader is sure to have the laughter on his side, however ignorant he may be of the subject that is being discussed. But Dr. Prichard was an excellent president and moderator, and though ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... married, if I ever do," she decided that day. "I won't marry a man who would 'jaw' like Aunt Rebecca. I'm fiery-tempered myself, and I'll have to learn to control my anger better. Goodness knows I've had enough striking examples of how scolding sounds! But I won't want to squabble with the man I really care for—Martin Landis, for instance—" Her thoughts went off to her castles in Spain as she gathered the arbutus into little bunches and tied them. "He offered to help me fix my schoolroom for the Spelling Bee on Saturday. He's got a big heart, my Sir Galahad of childhood." ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... thanked you for your letter of September 18th, with the accounts of the Genoese treaty and of the Pretender's quarrel with the Pope—it is a squabble worthy a Stuart. Were he, here, as absolute as any Stuart ever wished to be, who knows with all his bigotry but he might favour us with a reformation and the downfall of the mass? The ambition of making a Duke of York vice-chancellor of holy church would be as good a reason for breaking with holy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... afterwards of what it meant to be "taken up" by Mrs. Minchin, I might not have thought the comparison a good omen for my friendship with Matilda. To be hotly taken up by Mrs. Minchin meant an equally hot quarrel at no very distant date. The squabble with the bride was not slow to come, but Matilda and I fell out first. I think she was tyrannical, and I know I was peevish. My Ayah spoilt me; I spoke very broken English, and by no means understood all that the Bullers said to me; besides which, I was feverishly unhappy ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... interrupted me and said: "I am not at all interested in any squabble or quarrel between General Pershing and General Wood. The only thing I am interested in is winning this war. I selected General Pershing for this task and I intend to back him up in ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... when he was running for Mayor on the Socialist ticket, two members of the party went to his home and presented a blank resignation for his signature. This, he said, he signed in order to 'avoid a squabble,' although he considered it 'child's play and illegal.' He refused, he said, in 1913 to sign the required resignation before the election. This time he was defeated. In 1915, he testified, he was again ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... warrant you he can tell what makes every sound you hear. One comes from some kind of bird squawking; another I happen to know is a night heron looking for a supper along the water's edge; then I suppose coons squabble when they meet, trailing over half sunken logs; a bobcat calls to its mate; the owls tune up; chuckwillswidows, the same birds that we call whippoorwills up North, you know, keep a whooping all the time; and there are all sorts of other noises that might stand for anything. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... had—these three little boys and three little girls! How they laughed and jumped and knocked their heads together in picking up the cherries, yet never quarreled—for there were such heaps, it would have been ridiculous to squabble over them; and besides, whenever they began to quarrel, Brownie always ran away. Now he was the merriest of the lot; ran up and down the tree like a cat, helped to pick up the cherries, and was first-rate at filling ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... Guessing that some friendly squabble was in progress, the sailors made way for him good-humoredly, and he reached the forecastle only a moment behind Sigurd. Kark's taper was just disappearing among the shadows beneath ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... air, Addressed the god: 'Thou purblind chit, Of awkward and ill-judging wit, 10 If matches are not better made, At once I must forswear my trade. You send me such ill-coupled folks, That 'tis a shame to sell them yokes. They squabble for a pin, a feather, And wonder how they came together. The husband's sullen, dogged, shy; The wife grows flippant in reply: He loves command and due restriction, And she as well likes contradiction: 20 She never slavishly submits; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... in upon her self-arraignment. "Don't squabble, girls. The day is altogether too perfect. None of you are ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... proceedings: old women and children tattling; apes, bears, and show-boxes under the windows; French rattling, English swearing, outrageous Italians, frisking minstrels; tambours de basque at every corner; myself distracted; a confounded squabble of cooks and haranguing German couriers just arrived, their masters following open-mouthed; nothing to eat, the steam of ham and flesh-pots all the while provoking their appetite; Mynheers very busy with ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... an' it's allus worked like a charm. I could tell ye of many a squabble that's been settled by the means of a smilin' face an' a good hearty ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... it is simple enough. By mere chance I happened to read this morning that there had been some little domestic squabble in royal circles at Constantinople. I don't know whether you are acquainted with Turkish history, Mr. Winter, but it is a well-recognised principle that any Sultan is liable to die of diseases which are weird and painfully sudden; for instance, the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... take it," said he, "and better on the causeway than on Madame Brown's parlour floor. It's a gentleman's policy, I would think, to have the squabble in the open air, and save the women the likely ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... great; it is morally dangerous; for it brings with it the temptation to look on the thing found as your own possession, all but your own creation; to pride yourself on it, as if God had not known it for ages since; even to squabble jealously for the right of having it named after you, and of being recorded in the Transactions of I- know-not-what Society as its first discoverer:- as if all the angels in heaven had not been admiring it, long before you ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... wounded by it; no man's interest is promoted. In the seventh year of that Union, four million Catholics, lured by all kinds of promises to yield up the separate dignity and sovereignty of their country, are forced to squabble with such a man as Mr. Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds with which to educate their children in their own mode of worship; he, the same Mr. Spencer, having secured to his own Protestant self a reversionary portion of the public money amounting to ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... Greville, in his Memoirs, writing on 23rd of May, says: "The King prayed that he might live till the Princess Victoria was of age, and he was very nearly dying just as the event arrived. He is better, but supposed to be in a very precarious state. There has been a fresh squabble between Windsor and Kensington about a proposed ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... quarrelsome creature, and he gives vent to the impulse as far as it is compatible with his reasoned interests—often, to be sure, without regard for that limit. The average man or woman is always at open discord with some one; the great majority could not live without oft-recurrent squabble. Speak in confidence with any one you like, and get him to tell you how many cases of coldness, alienation, or downright enmity, between friends and kinsfolk, his memory registers; the number will be considerable, and what a vastly greater number of everyday "misunderstandings" ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... to wail over her lost delight, and Polly gravely poked at the mess, which was quite spoilt. But her attention was speedily diverted by the squabble going on in the corner; for Fanny, forgetful of her young-ladyism and her sixteen years, had boxed Tom's ears, and Tom, resenting the insult, had forcibly seated her in the coal-hod, where he held her with one hand while he returned the compliment with the other. Both ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... the police station. It happened, however, that the whole affair had occurred in the sight of a gentleman of well-known integrity. He, seated at a window overlooking the street, had witnessed the whole squabble, from its beginning in words to its culmination in blows; so, seeing that the woman was most unjustly arrested, he went out and explained the circumstances to the guardian of order. But to no purpose; the poor creature was taken to the station, accompanied by the gentleman, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were, till this time, new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the spheres of my studies. I, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... nominally a cardinal at the age of thirteen, and had advanced to the highest station in the Church. He was much absorbed in matters pertaining to learning and art, and in political affairs, and at first looked upon this Saxon disturbance as a mere squabble of monks. He attempted ineffectually to bring Luther to submission and quietness, first through his legate Cajetan, a scholarly Italian, who met him at Augsburg (1518), and then by a second ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... up the sleep earned on a long day's march or a sharply contested battlefield. I need only say that I extorted at last from Eveena a clear statement of the trifle at issue, which flatly contradicted those of the four participants in the squabble. She began to suggest a means of proving the truth, and they broke into angry clamour. Silencing them all peremptorily, I drew Eveena into my own chamber, and, when assured that we were unheard, reproved her for proposing to support her ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... between Aristotelian professors on one side and professors favouring the experimental method on the other. But this position was attacked and carried by a very simple statement. If the divine guidance of the Church is such that it can be dragged into a professorial squabble, and made the tool of a faction in bringing about a most disastrous condemnation of a proved truth, how did the Church at that time differ from any human organization sunk into decrepitude, managed nominally by simpletons, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... going home day after to-morrow, and very likely we'll never see the Cliftons again, after we leave here. They don't come here every summer like we do. And I hate to spoil these two last days with a horrid squabble, when we six have been so nice and chummy and pleasant all the time we've been here. You needn't have much to do with Pauline, if you don't want to, but just for two days, can't you just be decently polite to her, and not ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... ringing a decent door-bell for their amusement. It was very seldom that any harm was done. Once a serious fire broke out amongst the old wooden houses down on the river, and some of them were burnt to the ground, a fate that no one deplored; once a sailor was murdered in a drunken squabble at "The Dog and Pilchard," the wildest of the riverside hostelries; and once a Canon was caught and stripped and ducked in the waters of the Pol by a mob who resented his gentle appeals that they should try to prefer lemonade to gin; ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... course of events he is more conventional, finding rather small causes for large effects. The whole thing started, he assures us, in a quarrel of Augustinians and Dominicans over the spoils of indulgence-sales, "and this little squabble of monks in a corner of Saxony, produced more than a hundred years of discord, fury, and misfortune for thirty nations." "England separated from the pope because King Henry fell in love." The Swiss revolted because of the painful impression produced ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... out. I judged he was an old and valued client. The bow of the hotel-keeper was cordial in its deference, and he acknowledged it with familiar courtesy. For the servants he was Il Conde. There was some squabble over a man's parasol—yellow silk with white lining sort of thing—the waiters had discovered abandoned outside the dining-room door. Our gold-laced door-keeper recognized it and I heard him directing one of the lift boys to run after Il Conde with it. Perhaps he was the only Count ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... folks that know me call me the rain-maker. They may be right. They may be wrong. I'm not going to squabble about it. You can call me what you please. I shall not ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... at Kohl and Middleton's, Chicago, and the following week at Burton's Museum, Milwaukee; but when we made the next jump I found that White was not along. They had had a family squabble, the other apex of the triangle being a circus grafter who "shibbolethed" at some of the "brace games," which at that time had police protection, so far as that could be given. He had interfered between the couple, and was, I am sorry to say, quite successful as an interferer; ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... my fault," said the Judge; "the trial will make the matter plain. That pompous, stupid Count was the cause of the squabble, and that rascal Gerwazy; but this is the business of the court. It is too bad that you were not in the castle at the supper, Father; you would have borne witness how fearfully the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... description of Evasio Mon as any man had given. He had never quarreled with any one. He was, in consequence, a lonely man. For the majority of human beings are gregarious. They meet together in order to quarrel. The majority of women prefer to sit and squabble round one table to seeking another room. They call it the domestic circle, and spend their time in straining at the family tie in order to prove ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... Hoffner laughed sardonically) "they play into our hands. More than a twelvemonth of war has not taught them that the hitherto recognized observances of war are no longer binding. This is not a petty squabble between two nations. It is a struggle for existence; consequently it is where ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... declaring, in words better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the Bill, that nothing in the Act should affect the supremacy of the British Parliament. In short, the whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to the construction of a clause in a Bill not yet in Committee, and had no bottom ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... published with regard to French political or religious facts, even of recent date. A general impression has long prevailed that there was a Massacre of St. Bartholemew in Paris in the year 1572; but even that has recently been denied, or softened down into a mere political squabble. It is not, however, possible to deny the fact that there was a Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, though it has been vindicated as a noble act of legislation, worthy even of the reputation and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... pride of K'ang Hsi, and he forthwith declared that in future he would only allow facilities for preaching to those priests who shared his view. In 1716, an edict was issued, banishing all missionaries unless excepted as above. The Emperor had indeed been annoyed by another ecclesiastical squabble, on a minor scale of importance, which had been raging almost simultaneously round the choice of an appropriate Chinese term for God. The term approved, if not suggested, by K'ang Hsi, and indisputably ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... required was stated by the king's ministers, conditions were not infrequently exacted of the crown. Thus in 1785, on the occasion of a gift of eighteen million livres, the suppression of the works of Voltaire was demanded. And once at least, as late as 1750, on the occasion of a squabble between the church and the court, the clergy had refused to make any grant whatsoever. The total amount of the Free Gift voted during the reign of Louis XVI. was 65,800,000 livres, or less than four and a half millions a year on an average. The grant was not annual, but was made in lump ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... for the stake, the three girls followed. Even Corinne felt that she had done wrong in allowing this squabble to continue in the ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe

... as some momentary rush of passionate excitement, now slowly, as some depressing and gloomy notion succeeded; when suddenly my path was arrested by a long file of bullock cars which blocked up the way. Some chance squabble had arisen among the drivers, and to avoid the crowd and collision, I turned into a gateway which opened beside me, and soon found myself in a lawn handsomely planted and adorned with flowering shrubs ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... he closed the trap-door behind him, "we can have a quiet squabble and no one can come up to interfere with us. But look here, boys," he added, stepping to the parapet and looking over. "It's a mighty far ways to the ground—five stories or so—and if you go down, you will be sure to ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... had slain his father) in Moray, and next he killed two of Sweyn's men who had assisted in the burning of Thorbiorn's relative, Frakok, or Frakark, in Kildonan. Jarl Ragnvald with difficulty reconciles Thorbiorn and Sweyn, and they start for a joint raid. Soon, however, they squabble over the spoils, and Thorbiorn puts his wife Ingirid, Sweyn's sister, away, a deed that ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... already my views on an invasion of England; namely, that it would be like trying to hurt a monkey by throwing nuts at him. I didn't want to steal what French wanted, but now that the rifles had come and the troops had finished their musketry, there was no need to squabble over a Division. Why not let French have two of my Central Force Territorial Division at once,—they were jolly good and were wasting their time over here. That would sweeten French and he and Joffre would make no more trouble ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... lately when I've been afraid he'd kill somebody—in this squabble of ours, you know. He has been going armed—which was excusable enough, under the circumstances—and night before last, when we were walking up-town together, I had all I could do to keep him from taking a pot-shot ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... destiny of this country in his hands. I believe he means peace, and war will be averted, unless he is overruled by the disunion portion of his party. We all know the irrepressible conflict is going on in their camp.... Then, throw aside this petty squabble about how you are to get along with your pledges before election; meet the issues as they are presented; do what duty, honor, and patriotism require, and appeal to the people to sustain you. Peace is the only policy that can save the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Doctor. "I'm terribly sorry this has happened. But you mustn't mind Cheapside; he doesn't know any better. He's a city bird; and all his life he has had to squabble for a living. You must make allowances. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... with a note stating that "this duchess, when the head of this lady's family came by his death lately in a fatal duel, never rested until she got a pension for the orphan heir, and widow, from her Majesty's bounty." The squabble did not advance poor Esmond's promotion much, and indeed made him so ashamed of himself that he dared not show his face ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... be! He's coarse-grained, like his carved black cross-bow stock. Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, look! Well done, now—is not this beginning, now, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... simile might apply with equal propriety—to a bad angel as to a good one, it may in like manner be employed to illustrate small quarrels as well as great—a little family squabble, in which two or three people are engaged, as well as a vast national dispute, argued on each side by the roaring throats of five hundred angry cannon. The poet means, in fact, that the Duke of Marlborough had an immense genius ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... phrase as this: 'If we are not prepared to admit this, what do we prove ourselves to be? Baboons!' I laughed, but again Karl only smiled—this time, with deadly embarrassment. I discovered afterwards through Bulow that in some youthful squabble he had had the word 'Baboon-face' hurled at him. It soon became impossible to hide the fact that Ritter felt himself grossly insulted by 'the doctor,' as he called him, and he left my house foaming with rage, not to set foot in it again for years. After a few days I received a letter in ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... [With fierce shivering self-contempt] At last you get that you can bear nothing real at all: you'd rather starve than cook a meal; you'd rather go shabby and dirty than set your mind to take care of your clothes and wash yourself; you nag and squabble at home because your wife isn't an angel, and she despises you because you're not a hero; and you hate the whole lot round you because they're only poor slovenly useless devils like yourself. [Dropping his ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... been celebrated in ancient drama. An oracle had declared that he should kill his father, the king of Thebes. He was, in consequence, brought up in ignorance of his parentage, yet this led to the accomplishment of the oracle, for as a youth he, during a roadside squabble, killed his father not knowing him. For this crime, which had been one of their own devising, the gods, with their usual inconsistency, punished the land of Thebes; afflicting that hapless country with a terrible monster called the Sphinx, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... apron-bibs, and even childish pinafores, is anyone likely to doubt? Schoolgirls can be patriots as well as rebels, and the seminary can vie with the college, or possibly outdo it, occasion given. Ask Juliette Adam whether the bread-and-butter misses of France in the year 1847 did not squabble over the obstinacy of King Louis Philippe and the greed of M. Guizot, the claims of Louis Napoleon and the theories of Louis Blanc, of Odilon Barrot, and Ledru-Rollin? And I who write, have I not seen a North Antrim Sunday-school wrecked in a faction-fight between ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... feet and picking up his overcoat). Good boy! You've probably saved me a disagreeable squabble. I won't wait for Carmody. The sight of him makes me lose my temper. Tell him I'll be back to-morrow with definite information about ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... cow, and, in both cases, before an offender can be reinstated he must kill a fowl and swallow a drop or two of its blood with turmeric. Women commonly get the lobe of the ear torn through the heavy ear-rings which they wear; and in a squabble another woman will often seize the ear-ring maliciously in order to tear the ear. A woman injured in this way is put out of caste for a year in Janjgir. To grow turmeric or garlic is also an offence against caste, but a man is permitted to do this for his own ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... adventure, until at last he reached a large city in Asia, which was all in an uproar over the choosing of a new Emir. All the principal citizens had formed themselves into two parties, and it was not until after a prolonged squabble that they agreed that the person to whom the most singular thing happened should be Emir. Our young traveller entered the town at this juncture, with his agreeable face and jaunty air, and all at once felt something alight ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... learned to consider nothing strange in this citizen squabble. Come, speak as a friend, and I promise on my honour not ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph White (1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... squabble and snatch of argument, given dignity only because it concerned the recovery of near a million dollars, we seemed to have lost Worth Gilbert entirely. He kept his seat, that chair he had taken instantly when ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... squabble began. Italian "archaeologists of the highest standing" backed Prof. Pigorini: Mortillet had not seen the Italian things, but he stood to his guns. Things found near Cracow were taken as corroborating the Breonio finds, ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... should I get married?' retorted Fedya; 'I'm very well off as I am. What do I want a wife for? To squabble with, eh?' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... which it was customary for the doge to celebrate in his palace, after the bull-hunt, on the Carnival Thursday, a squabble had arisen from some too pressing familiarity offered by one of the young gallants of the court to his mistress. Michele Steno, a gentleman of poor estate, was enamoured of a lady in attendance upon the dogaressa; and, presuming upon her favour, he was guilty of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... We meet twice a week, usually at his house, to squabble over his method of Latin pronunciation and his construction of the ablative case. He's got a theory of the ablative absolute," said Warren with a scowl, "fit to fetch ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... does Sir Edgar? and your friend Bland? I suppose you are involved in some literary squabble. The only way is to despise all brothers of the quill. I suppose you won't allow me to be an author, but I contemn you all, you ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... bottes, moved to report progress. COURTNEY down on him like cartload of bricks; declined to put Motion, declaring it abuse of forms of House. This rather depressing. In good old times there would have been an outburst of indignation in Irish camp; Chairman's ruling challenged, and squabble agreeably occupied rest of evening. But times changed. No Irish present to back TANNER, who, with despairing look round, subsided, and business went ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... you miss the opportunity.' Now Sir Jib Boom was between seventy and eighty, and he and Captain Cuttwater had met each other nearly every day for the last twenty years, and had never met without a squabble. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... hitherto produced so much mischief in the world, and which will infallibly produce more, and possibly greater. It is my protest against the delusion by which some have been taught to look upon this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place or patronage, and to regard this Jacobin war abroad as a common war about trade or territorial boundaries, or about a political balance of power among rival or jealous states. Above all, it is my protest against that mistake or perversion of sentiment by which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the mail-bags were opened, listened and commented; while one or two of the squires, and a shabby, disreputable-looking minor canon made each notable name the occasion of a toast, whether of health to his majesty's friends or confusion to his foes. A squabble, as to whether the gallant Berwick should be reckoned as an honest Frenchman or as a traitor Englishman, was interrupted by the Major's entrance, and the congratulations ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... owing to her want of memory, forgot the squabble five minutes afterwards, and even forgot that she knew her antagonist at all. She would ask to be introduced, or even come up sweetly and introduce herself within half an hour of the battle. But Madame Plume forgot nothing; her memory was keen and accurate. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... Malta, 1805, there happened a drunken squabble on the road from Valette to St. Antonio, between a party of soldiers and another of sailors. They were brought before me the next morning, and the great effect which their intoxication had produced on their memory, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... very much, I'm afraid," she told him ruefully. Then rising, she held out her hand. "Come! We mustn't quarrel again. I don't know why we always squabble!" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... first. But I did not doubt that Disraeli would still keep hold of so much of his notice of Feb. 3 as had not been set aside by the budget. I said that from motives which I could neither describe nor conquer I was quite unable to undertake to enter into any squabble or competition with him for the possession of a post of prominence. We had much conversation on political prospects: Graham wishing to see me lead the Commons under Lord John as prime minister in the Lords; admitting that the same thing would do under Lord Derby, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... another on your remove, or step into some other course." And Coke, no doubt, took care that it should be so. Cecil, too, may possibly have thought that Bacon gave no proof of his fitness for affairs in thus bringing before him a squabble in which both parties ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... American squabble; and the captain has had instructions that this schooner is going to steal out of port to-night. Some one informed. ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... the book, you say, made the argument hard to follow, and thrown a quality of insincerity over the whole. Are we but mocking at Utopias, you demand, using all these noble and generalised hopes as the backcloth against which two bickering personalities jar and squabble? Do I mean we are never to view the promised land again except through a foreground of fellow-travellers? There is a common notion that the reading of a Utopia should end with a swelling heart and clear resolves, with lists of names, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... early, pounced upon a letter for him and wanted to read it. But as he recognised his father's writing—the envelope had had much redirection in varying scripts—and as her letters were always sealed to him, he refused to open it in her presence. He was not in the mood for a squabble with her. The fact that his father had managed to pierce his inaccessibility had unnerved him, the mere sight of the letter almost making him tremble. He put it in his pocket; it was imperative he should be alone when reading it. Cleo ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... rest, for it wants men and money; the Republic of the United Provinces wants both still more; the other Powers cannot well dance, when neither France, nor the maritime powers, can, as they used to do, pay the piper. The first squabble in Europe, that I foresee, will be about the Crown of Poland, should the present King die: and therefore I wish his Majesty a long life and a merry Christmas. So much for foreign politics; but 'a propos' of them, pray ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield



Words linked to "Squabble" :   contend, fence, dustup, wrangle, run-in, words, row, argue, debate, quarrel



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