squabble

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English

Etymology

The noun form first appears c. 1602, while the verbal form first appears c. 1616. Probably of North Germanic origin and ultimately imitative.[1]

Related to Swedish dialectal skvabbel (“a dispute, quarrel, gossip”), Norwegian dialectal skvabba (“to prattle”), German dialectal schwabbeln (“to babble, prattle”), Swedish dialectal skvappa (“to chide, scold”, literally “make a splash”).

Pronunciation

Noun

squabble (plural squabbles)

  1. A minor fight or argument.
    The children got into a squabble about who should ride in the front of the car.
    • 2022 October 18, Placeholder McD, “SCP-7579 ”, in SCP Foundation‎, archived from the original on 20 December 2024:
      "p your mess.
      Also, as apologetic as you were for occupying my time, which I had hoped to spend with my daughter, you used about twice as many words as you needed to, and wasted an entire paragraph complaining about your colleagues. I went back to the SCP-079 file — Supervisor Valis would have had the thing decommissioned years ago if it weren't for your blatant technofetishism. Yet, you have the gall to characterize the Foundation's ongoing political interventions and military operations as squabbles."

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

squabble (third-person singular simple present squabbles, present participle squabbling, simple past and past participle squabbled)

  1. (intransitive) To participate in a minor fight or argument; to quarrel.
    The brothers were always squabbling with each other.
    • 1725, Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, , 2nd edition, London: John Clark and Richard Hett, , Emanuel Matthews, , and Richard Ford, , published 1726, →OCLC:
      The sense of these propositions is very plain and easy, though logicians might perhaps squabble a whole day whether they should rank them under negative or affirmative.
  2. (transitive, printing) To disarrange, so that the letters or lines stand awry and require readjustment.
    to squabble type

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Translations

References

  1. ^ James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Squabble”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.
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