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noun
Squabble  n.  A scuffle; a wrangle; a brawl.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Squabble" Quotes from Famous Books



... now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Waltheof (who 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 reopened ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... 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 ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... hoeing in a field and got in a squabble about something with a young gal name Polly, same name as his wife. After while he git so mad he reach up with his fingers and wet them on his tongue and point straight up and say, "Now you got a trick on ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... her very best company. Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt, on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution, and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who are amis de la maison, made up ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the people on the estate, but there's a government somewhere around here, and they're getting offish, and it can't be helped. You don't want to squabble over the lighthouse. Why not buy some vineyards in Aragon? You can afford it now. The officials want to interfere with you. Why not ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... gipsies beset him, each taking all he could for himself. But Devilshoof having secured the medallion, made off with it. He was no sooner gone than a dark woman wrapped in a cloak came into the street and, when she was right in the midst of the squabble, she dropped her cloak and revealed herself as Queen of the band. All the gipsies were amazed and not very comfortable either!—because, strange to say, this gipsy queen did not approve of the maraudings of her band; and when she caught them ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... to be the ardent lover at the foot, Pin was but a poor climber, and, as she clung trembling to her branch, needed so much prompting in her lines—even then to repeat them with such feeble emphasis—that Laura invariably lost patience with her and the love-scene ended in a squabble. Passing behind a wooden fence which was a tangle of passion-flower, she opened the door of the fowl-house, and out strutted the mother-hen followed by her pretty brood. Laura had given each of the chicks a name, and she now took Napoleon ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... Phil. "And I 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 ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... big steamer stopped her engines and drifted until the squabble ahead of her seemed ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... in the half-empty shed, and the boys, merely for the fun of teasing, declared that they should not, so blocked up the door-way as fast as the girls cleared it. Seeing that the squabble was a merry one, and the exercise better for all than lounging in the sun or reading in school during recess, Teacher did not interfere, and the barrier rose and fell almost ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... rather sue to be despis'd, then to deceiue so good a Commander, with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an Officer. Drunke? And speake Parrat? And squabble? Swagger? Sweare? And discourse Fustian with ones owne shadow? Oh thou invisible spirit of Wine, if thou hast no name to be knowne by, let ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... of that day occasionally let us into quaint glimpses of a churchman's tribulations in those primitive times. The historian Faillon tells some strange things about Bishop Laval and Governor D'Argenson: their squabble about holy bread. (Histoire de la Colonie Francaise en Canada, vol. ii., p. 467.) At page 470, is an account of a country girl, ordered to be brought to town by Bishop Laval and shut up in the Hotel-Dieu, she being considered under a spell, cast on her by a miller whom she had rejected when he ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... very good name too for his business), and muttered something about satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... 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 ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was, or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... 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, formation of committees, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... shouted. "Have I not told you that there's no honor in this bloody squabble? Lord save the lad, he's mad as ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... the fire?" says Mrs. Huntley, in her slow sugared tones, with a well-bred ignoring of our squabble. "I am sure that you must ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... 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 mine, have ye no story or rare adventure ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... first "guineas" were struck. In both countries there was a general irritation which vented itself in cries for war, and in the session of 1664 the English Parliament presented an address to the Crown praying for the exaction of redress for wrongs done by the Dutch to English merchants. But the squabble was of long standing, and there was nothing to threaten any immediate strife. Charles himself indeed shrank from wars which he foresaw would leave him at the mercy of his Parliament; and Clarendon with Ormond, the bishops, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... unequal were at first confin'd To speak in broken verse the mourner's mind. Prosperity at length, and free content, In the same numbers gave their raptures vent; But who first fram'd the Elegy's small song, Grammarians squabble, and ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... and for their digestion's sake, it was well that the farmer's wife warned him that there might be such a thing as over-feeding, even of pigs. He would have spent the best part of the afternoon in filling the trough and watching them squabble over it. ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... him from his garret, where He heard the daily squabble; And lo, in human form, he stands Before ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... the School Committee compared conclusions and resolved that something must be done. It was evident that the youth of the township, under the leadership of 'the boy Haddon,' had dragged Waddy into a nasty squabble, some of the results of which were unpleasantly conspicuous on the faces and heads of prominent committeemen. Then the ravaged gardens had to be taken into consideration. Calmer judgment had convinced the residents that the destruction wrought was not all ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... the one Pope who did not know how to behave to his chancery—to that circle 'of poets and orators who bestowed on the Papal court as much glory as they received from it.' It is delightful to see the indignation of these haughty gentlemen, when some squabble about precedence happened, when, for instance, the 'Advocati consistoriales' claimed equal or superior rank to theirs. The Apostle John, to whom the 'Secreta caelestia' were revealed; the secretary of Porsenna, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... 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 ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... transaction is not an entrance into a "holy state of matrimony": it is as often as not the inauguration of a lifelong squabble, a corroding grudge, that causes more misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural "desertions" and "betrayals." Yet the number of marriages effected more or less in this way must be enormous. When people say that love should be free, their words, taken literally, ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... afternoon a neighbour brought word up to the house that there was some sort of a squabble going on down at ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... theatres and players, though only a small percentage is criticism. More people would recognize each of thirty popular performers than could identify even one of the great in other branches of art or in science. A recent squabble about a couple of actresses has been the subject of greater fuss than would be caused by the discovery of the lost books of Livy, of a picture by Apelles, of the MS. of an unknown opera by Beethoven, of a method of making accumulators ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... but either serve with 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 ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... Neal Dow and the orthodox Maine Law party. Thus the house will be divided—is, indeed, already divided—against itself. What then? The Scriptures say that such a house can't stand. It can't. And thus the Maine Law is crippled in a miserable squabble with fugitive slaves, Bloomers, and Abolitionists. How strange! Great country ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... whom the people I have talked with have confidence. Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenvitch, Trepov, the despicable hordes of Russian emigrees who haunt the Grand Hotel, Stockholm; the Socithans House, Helsingfors; the offices of the peace commission in Paris, and squabble among themselves as to how the Russian situation shall be solved; all equally fail to find many supporters in Petrograd.) Those with whom I have talked recognize that revolution, did it succeed in developing a strong government, would result in a white terror comparable with that of ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... class of men paid so little attention to the opinions of the clergy as that to which these unhappy men belonged."); it is capital; if there is more, and you have a copy, do lend it. It shows well that a scientific man had better be trampled in dirt than squabble. I have been drawing diagrams, dissecting shoots, and muddling my brains to a hopeless degree about the divergence of leaves, and have of course utterly failed. But I can see that the subject is most curious, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... mounds and trenches which marked it as a strongly fortified position. For many centuries it played an important part in the history of England. At length, however, the jealousies of the laity and the clergy, a squabble like that of "town and gown," but with graver underlying causes, broke up the harmony and practically ended the existence of the place except as a monument of the past. It seems a pity that the headquarters of the Prince of Peace could not have managed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... voices and music stops all regular 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 the realities, and smoking as deliberately as if in a solitary lusthuys over the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... five o'clock, Carr arrived. I went into the hall to meet him, and to bring him into the drawing-room myself. Just as we came in, and while I was introducing him to Sir George, Ralph and Aurelia, who were sitting together as usual, started a lovers' squabble. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... foot clasped round right ankle, elbow of right arm leaning on box, and clenched left hand swinging to and fro in perilous proximity to a grand old proboscis, he literally drives home his argument. House may listen, if it pleases, like crowd closing in on street squabble; HENRY JAMES is having it out with his old friends and Leader; professing fullest respect, and even reverence for his right hon. friend the Member for Midlothian, but at same time showing how utterly, hopelessly wrong he and his have gone since his former Solicitor-General ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various

... 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

... pains to lock the front door after them. Due to a squabble among themselves on their arrival at the house, the back door had remained unlocked. Dulcie Vale had been roughly ordered by Leslie to see to it. Dulcie was sulking, however, at Leslie's high-handed manner. She resolved to take her time about ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... reward for his services in South America, to a 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 was despatched to the Black Sea with the avowed object of destroying ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... to secure the release by any American officer taken into custody by Chinese police, Ned turned to the window and looked out on the court. He understood, too, that his own arrest would mean a long delay in prison while his identity was being established. So he thought best to keep out of the squabble the hot-headed officer ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... S, and T, mere et fils, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for who has not written his novel now-a-days?—who has not a claim to the star and straw-colored ribbon?—and who shall have the biggest and largest? Fancy the struggle! Fancy the squabble! Fancy the distribution ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Eton in his fifteenth 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 virtue ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... this letter was one of relief—evidently Henrietta was not angry with him or she would not have alluded to herself as his daughter! There must therefore have been some other reason for her turning back other than the squabble between them which Hatszegi had so industriously circulated. Well, he would settle accounts ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... In the 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 old Dykeman seemed ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... the woman who was talking to me a moment since now lies at my feet in a very untidy condition. You conceive, madame, I used to tease her about that twisted little-finger, in the days before we began to squabble: and it annoys me that Thragnar should not have omitted even Lisa's crooked little-finger on her left hand. Yes, such painstaking carefulness worries me. For you conceive also, madame, it would be more or less awkward if I had made an error, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... A squabble of human speech followed, of which Jerry knew no word but of which he sensed the significance. Lamai was with him and for him. Lamai's mother was against him. She shrilled and shrewed her firm conviction that her son was a fool and worse because he had neither ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... driv'ling Mounson to take up the squabble, That lord which first taught the use of the woodden dagger and ladle: (61) He that out-does Jack Pudding (62) at a custard or a caudle, And were the best foole in Europe but that he wants a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... time, the work of Luther came to Hutten's attention. The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all as a mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had no further interest than this: "Brother Martin," being a scholar, was most probably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, it had no significance; the more monkish strifes ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. (To Men.) Take him on from this, or the lot of us will be likely put on trial for his ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... core of our subject; and I should wish the Reader to get it by heart, until he grow familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations. Before proceeding upon these, I would, however, ask him to reflect how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless, squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth, and whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying. For true or false is a judgment of existence; it refers to Things; it implies that ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... it looked like a general squabble, for other delegates sprang to their feet and called out, and the interpreters, dashing round the hall with notebooks, could scarcely keep pace, and every one was excited except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows and watched. For the hold, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... obtain a satisfactory test of medical efficiency, 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 views in ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... doctor grimly, "that clinches it! That locks you to the wheel! That pledges you. The squabble is on, now. It's your honour that's engaged now, not your nerves, not your intestines. It's a good fight—a very good fight, with no chance of losing anything but life. You go up the river to Mulqueen's. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... 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 ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... budgero," said Merriman. "We'll get into it and row up to Calcutta in half the time it would take the ship. Each of us merchants has his own budgero, and instead of putting our men in buttons with our arms and all that nonsense, we give them colored sashes—and don't our women squabble about the colors, my ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Adieu! whate'er thou didst desire From careless stanzas such as these, Of passion reminiscences, Pictures of the amusing scene, Repose from labour, satire keen, Or faults of grammar on its page— God grant that all who herein glance, In serious mood or dalliance Or in a squabble to engage, May find a crumb to satisfy. Now we must ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... ascribing to her frivolous nature the true cause of our unhappiness. I admired Pauline, and I looked to her to become the mother of my children; but we could neither of us endure the other's presence for any length of time without a squabble, so that our domestic infelicity became a jest and a byword even among our servants. In these circumstances I felt it would be better that we should part. It is said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all: though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida's resentment; it drew a part of the sting from her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange perceptibly to lower his crest. He was unable to produce the money or to raise it in any way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and scarcely more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue from his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... never! one 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 sat leaning back in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... 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 ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... 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 ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... that what it means then, Jack—some tough guys been out there on the gulf keepin' a close watch on the schooner that came up the coast loaded to the gun'ls with case goods, an' crept in with small boats to make a big haul! Listen to 'em squabble, will you, boy? What wouldn't I give for daylight so's to see that boss shindy—shootin' keeps a'goin' on like the old days over there—wow! They must be a bunch o' rotten marksmen, or the whole lot'd be wiped out afore this time. What're we a'goin' to do 'bout it, Jack—we ought ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... 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

... all right, don't squabble! Bleibe ruhig, hast verstanden? Alexander Daviditch! at ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the particulars of the squabble, Dr. Trenire attended to the wound. It was only a surface one, but the skin was torn rather badly, and Jabez was bleeding a good deal, and groaning with ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... that painful and threadbare scene of recrimination. The plot demands, observe, that the villain shall not relent. We know quite well that he cannot, for if he did the play would fall to pieces. Why, then, should we expect or demand a sordid squabble which can lead to nothing? We—and by "we" I mean the public which relishes such plays—cannot possibly have any keen appetite for copious re-hashes of such very cold mutton as the appeals of the penitent heroine to the recalcitrant villain. And the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... friends (said 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; in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... Griscom. "The railroad men's union is in a squabble among themselves and a fight is on. That means trouble ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... amounts to this:—Is the measure proposed required by the necessities of India? I cannot consent totally to lose sight of the real wants of the people who are the objects of it, and to hunt after every matter of party squabble that may be started on the several provisions. On the question of the duration of the commission I am clear and decided. Can I, can any one who has taken the smallest trouble to be informed concerning the affairs of India, amuse himself with so strange an imagination as that the habitual despotism ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... afternoon an uncommon number other acquaintances dropped in. In the tactful manner of their kind they buzzed with the one absorbing topic. Some were vastly amused. Some were sympathetic. One and all they were consumed with curiosity for detailed inside information on the Free Gold squabble. One note rang consistently in their gossipy song: The Free Gold Company was going to lose a pot of money in some manner, as a consequence of the affair. Mr. Wagstaff had put some surprising sort of spoke in the company's ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... lost six 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 ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... oozings of ale. And what was all this, upon enquiry, but a carousal of seven thirsty neighbours—a goldsmith, a pilot, a smith, a miner, a chimney-sweeper, a poet, and a parson who had come to preach sobriety, and to exhibit in himself what a disgusting thing drunkenness is. The origin of the last squabble was a dispute which had arisen among them, about which of the seven loved a pipe and flagon best. The poet had carried the day over all the rest, with the exception of the parson, who, out of respect for his cloth, had the most votes, being ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... love rows, my boyhood liked a squabble; But at this hour I wish to part in peace, Leaving such to the literary rabble; Whether my verse's fame be doomed to cease While the right hand which wrote it still is able, Or of some centuries to take a lease, The grass upon my grave will grow as long, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

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

... preservation; but it would not hold good, and it was a mere piece of truckling on my part when I suggested that longitudinal belts of the world were cooled one after the other. I shall very much like to see Agassiz's letter, whenever you receive one. I have written a long letter; but a squabble with or about Hooker always does me a world of good, and we have been at it many a long year. I cannot understand whether he attacks me as a wriggler or a hammerer, but I am very sure that a deal of wriggling has to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... time for you two to squabble. You should be leaving for school in less than five ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson

... and often ludicrous. Paradise Lost, as a whole, is radically tainted by a vicious principle. It professes to justify the ways of God to man, to account for sin and death, and it tells you that the whole originated in a political event; in a court squabble as to a particular act of patronage and the due or undue promotion of an eldest son. Satan may have been wrong, but on Milton's theory he had an arguable case at least. There was something arbitrary in the promotion; there were little ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... warbler was cheeping inquiringly at this sudden change in the deportment of his friend behind the shoulder of shale. The sandpiper, a bit startled, had gone back to the edge of the river and was running a race with himself along the wet sand. And the two quarrelsome jays had brought their family squabble to the edge ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... weather they were steaming. The contest went on before elections, and was kept up with just as much energy after elections. No vote could settle it, and no success could quiet it. It was in the nature of a political squabble, covering the whole State, dividing districts, counties, cities, towns, villages, settlements, beats, crossroads groceries, and families. It was a knock-down-and-drag-out fight, in which hair pulling, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... 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.

... off his mind very simply by setting down the Martha on the beach, and letting those who chose to claim her settle their squabble among themselves. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... variance, difference, dissension, misunderstanding, cross purposes, odds, brouillerie [Fr.]; division, split, rupture, disruption, division in the camp, house divided against itself, disunion, breach; schism &c (dissent) 489; feud, faction. quarrel, dispute, tiff, tracasserie^, squabble, altercation, barney [Slang], demele, snarl, spat, towrow^, words, high words; wrangling &c v.; jangle, brabble^, cross questions and crooked answers, snip-snap; family jars. polemics; litigation; strife &c (contention) 720; warfare &c 722; outbreak, open rupture, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice, apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in the garden. I always had a ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... although 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 ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... 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

... these alarms, their coachman was engaged in a squabble with some blackguard boys, who had gathered round his coach in order to steal the oranges: from words they came to blows: the two nymphs saw the commencement of the fray as they were returning to the coach, after having abandoned the design of going to the fortuneteller's. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... at a glance that this was no personal squabble but one of the infrequent but always impending ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... actively engaged in endeavours to subdue the devouring flames, obtained a supply of water: the engines were set to work, and the Foreman directed the pipe so as to throw the water completely into the mob which had collected round them. This had the desired effect of putting an end to the squabble, and dispersing a large portion of the multitude, at least to some distance, so as to leave good and sufficient room ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... I didn't!" Mrs. Carr-Boldt said. "I had my breakfast and letters at seven, bath at eight, straightened out that squabble between Swann and the cook,—I think Paul is still simmering, but that's neither here nor there!—then I went down with the vet to see the mare. Joe'll never forgive me if I've really broken the creature's knees!—then I telephoned mother, and saw Harriet's violin man, and talked to that ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... softly, "Bo-gie! Bo-gie! Come, bogie!" This instance of fancy in a cottage child stands, however, alone in my experience. I have never heard anything else like it in the village. The children romp and squabble and make much noise; they play, though rarely, at hide-and-seek; or else they gambol about aimlessly, or try to sing together, or troop off to look at the fowls or the rabbits. The bigger children are as a rule extremely kind to the lesser ones. A family of small brothers and sisters ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... be seen that Hutten regarded the Reformation in its earlier stages as merely a monkish squabble, and failed to see the tremendous upheaval of all the old landmarks of ecclesiastical domination which was immanent in it. So soon, however, as he perceived its real significance, he threw himself wholly into the movement. It must not be forgotten, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... dream; but what it was I could not remember. My heart was thumping furiously; I felt bewildered and feverish; I sate up in the bed and looked about the room. A broad flood of moonlight came in through the curtainless window; everything was as I had last seen it; and though the domestic squabble in the back lane was, unhappily for me, allayed, I yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his way home, the then popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage of this diversion I lay down again, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... 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 grew sulky ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... provoke an argument by declaring very loudly that Lord R—— or the Duke "is a thorough scoundrel," according to their opinion of public affairs. If this don't take, they can keep up a perpetual squabble with the conductor, which will show they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... 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

... exercised 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 of a ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... ludicrous show of despair, the Greek was about to attempt another desperate struggle for the recovery of his goods, when two Zouaves elbowed their small persons upon the crowded stage, and were eagerly referred to by all the parties concerned in the squabble. How they contrived it, I cannot say, so prompt were their movements; but, in a very few minutes, the watches were in their possession, and going much faster than was agreeable either to Turk or Greek, who both combined to arrest this new movement, and thereby added a sharp thrashing to ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... bulletins and articles for the 'Moniteur,' revising the details of the budgets, giving instructions to architects as to alterations to be made at the Tuileries and the Church of the Madelaine, throwing an occasional sarcasm at Madame de Stael and the Parisian journals, interfering to put down a squabble at the Grand Opera, carrying on a correspondence with the Sultan of Turkey and the Schah of Persia, so that while his body was at Finkenstein, his mind seemed to be working at a hundred different places in Paris, in Europe, and throughout ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... "These English are such fools that in their anxiety to observe the rules of warfare" (here von 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 ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... sugar, as he had seen many people do at Paris. He had only asked to be received at that unusual hour, he said, that he might tell Madame he had succeeded in obtaining the pardon of one of her proteges, a poor operative in the factory who had been arrested on account of a squabble with a Prussian. And Gilberte thereon seized the opportunity to mention ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... remark,' said Melmotte. 'I did not come here out of the City at very great personal inconvenience to myself to squabble about the lock of the drawer. As I was informed that you three gentlemen would be here together, I thought the opportunity a suitable one for meeting you and making you an offer about this unfortunate business.' He paused a moment; but neither of the three spoke. It ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various



Words linked to "Squabble" :   argue, debate, fence, pettifoggery, pettifog, fuss, bickering, brabble, quibble, niggle, bicker, run-in, dustup



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