Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bickering   /bˈɪkərɪŋ/   Listen
Bickering

noun
1.
A quarrel about petty points.  Synonyms: bicker, fuss, pettifoggery, spat, squabble, tiff.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bickering" Quotes from Famous Books



... Urim, work divinely wrought, Ascended; at his right hand Victory Sat eagle-wing'd; beside him hung his bow And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored; And from about him fierce effusion roll'd Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire; Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, He onward came; far off their coming shone; And twenty thousand (I their number heard) Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen: He on the wings of cherub rode sublime On the crystalline sky, in ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... expected any such bickering as I have indicated, between the soldiers of the two sections; and, fortunately, there has been none between the politicians. Possibly I am the only one who thought of the liability of such a ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... we are all together, whether we wish to be or no, and for six weeks or more on the island we shall see no faces but our own. Are we to be divided from the beginning by quarrels? Are maybe even the men of us to be set by the ears through the bickering of women?" ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn, flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened through, and we went on ... still in silence. The silence began to make me tremble but I was glad, anyhow, that I had gone with him. I conjectured that he had brought me a-field to give me ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... of his enunciation assorted consistently with the general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... clash, The lightnings of the waters flash In awful whiteness o'er the shore, 630 That shines and shakes beneath the roar; Thus—as the stream and Ocean greet, With waves that madden as they meet— Thus join the bands, whom mutual wrong, And fate, and fury, drive along. The bickering sabres' shivering jar; And pealing wide or ringing near Its echoes on the throbbing ear, The deathshot hissing from afar; The shock, the shout, the groan of war, 640 Reverberate along that vale, More suited to the shepherd's tale: Though few the numbers—theirs ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... turning from the rose pink of early morning. I could hear again the bickering cries of the snow geese and sandhill cranes away in an unknown distance, the homelier calls of barnyard fowl nearer at hand. Cattle trotted before me and to right and left, their heads high, their gait swinging with the freedom of the half-wild animals of the ranges. After a few steps they turned ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... of reiterated explanations, I myself learn to recognise some of the gods at sight. The figure seated upon a lotus, holding a sword in its hand, and surrounded by bickering fire, is Fudo- Sama—Buddha as the Unmoved, the Immutable: the Sword signifies Intellect; the Fire, Power. Here is a meditating divinity, holding in one hand a coil of ropes: the divinity is Buddha; those are the ropes which bind the passions and desires. Here also ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... reluctantly, but surely, towards such a thoroughness of mobilisation. There need be no doubt that she will completely socialise herself, completely reorganise her whole social and economic structure sooner than lose this war. She will do it clumsily and ungracefully, with much internal bickering, with much trickery on the part of her lawyers, and much baseness on the part of her landlords; but she will do it not so slowly as a logical mind might anticipate. She will get there a little late, expensively, but still ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... or something else, he would put down the half-franc he had previously received. Again the soldier received a rude surprise. The canteen proprietor would reluctantly say that the French money was useless to him. There would be a repetition of the previous bickering over the British shilling, and at last the astonished soldier would learn that he could only change the French half-franc at a discount of forty per cent. In this instance the change would be the equivalent of twopence in English ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... occasion a great meeting was summoned by the workmen leaders to meet in Trafalgar Square (about the right to meet in which place there had for years and years been bickering). The civic bourgeois guard (called the police) attacked the said meeting with bludgeons, according to their custom; many people were hurt in the melee, of whom five in all died, either trampled to death on the spot, or from the effects of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... of magnanimity, he resembled the great Emperor. M. Paul would have quarrelled with twenty learned women, would have unblushingly carried on a system of petty bickering and recrimination with a whole capital of coteries, never troubling himself about loss or lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty Madame de Staels, if, they had annoyed, offended, outrivalled, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... our auld Scots sangs When nature they portray! We think we hear the wee bit burn Gaun bickering doun the brae; We see the spot, though far awa', Where first life's breath we drew, And a' the gowden scenes of youth Seem ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, Wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... occasion to witness a prospect quite novel to us. Glancing to our left, on Michigan's sylvan shore, we saw the bickering flames of a ravaging forest fire; dyeing all the surrounding air and landscape crimson, while dense clouds of smoke hung over the burning land like a pall upon which the sun-rays were reflected with weird effect. It was, indeed, ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... Canadian traffic, and also to cut into the profits of the "Northwestern," Mr. Lovejoy's road. In brief, the Truro Railroad found itself very advantageously placed, as Mr. Worthington and Mr. Flint had foreseen. There followed a period of bickering and recrimination, of attempts of the other two railroads to secure representation in the Truro directorate, of suits and injunctions and appeals to the Legislature and I know not what else—in all of which affairs Mr. Bijah ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... pay much for peace at any time, but especially when one on the journey of life is wearied unto death with sin, and bickering, and trouble and hurt and pain. Life holds so much heartache and heartbreak. ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou needna start awa sae hasty Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek Text: tosson tis t'ep leussel oson t'epi laan iaesi]: so far does man see as lie hurls a stone. Now, in the skirmish of 'bickering,' this would argue no great limitation of eyesight. 'Why, man, how far would you see? Would you see round a corner?' 'A shot of several hundred yards,' says Mr. Mure, 'were no great feat for a country lad well skilled in the art of stone-throwing.' But this ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... The bickering discussion became general for a moment, then, still disputing, Casson and Wye walked off toward camp, and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... cheerfully crack the illogical pate; No longer, the dull understanding to aid, The stomach accepts the instructive blade, Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what From a revelation of rabbit-shot; And vilification's flames—behold! Burn with a bickering faint and cold. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... Strachey"? If Timon chooses to invite Ullorxa to his feast, are we to bar the door because no one ever heard the name before? No: let us have our Shakespeare (is he not as much ours as yours?) free from all notes, on a page purified from the musty cobwebs of black-letter pedants. We want no jargon of bickering critics to drown the music that sings at Heaven's gate. Give us those immortal plays just as Shakespeare wrote them, that we may read them without let ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... far that Lipotchka is gorgeously arrayed to receive her nobly born suitor, and accept him. Her mother is feasting her eyes on her adored child, in one of the intervals of her grumbling and bickering with her "ungrateful offspring," and warning the dear idol not to come in contact with the door, and crush her finery. But the match-maker announces that the man has beaten a retreat; Lipotchka falls in a swoon. Her ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... and Mr. Joe Bullitt met him at the gate and offered him hearty greeting. All bickering and dissension among these three had passed. The lady was so wondrous impartial that, as time went on, the sufferers had come to be drawn together, rather than thrust asunder, by their common feeling. It had grown to be a bond ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... passed into months and a' things grew waur instead o' better in the Hall. The general he got mair nairvous, and his leddy mair melancholy every day, and yet there wasna any quarrel or bickering between them, for when they've been togither in the breakfast room I used often tae gang round and prune the rose-tree alongside o' the window, so that I couldna help hearin' a great pairt o' their conversation, though sair against ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... invest his money better than in paying for that; and that it would be better for him and Grettir to go on bickering since "each oak has that which it scrapes from the other." Thorkell said: "But I ask you, Grettir, to do so much for my sake as not to attack Bjorn while you are both ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... office building of the pipe foundry that burned on the night of July fifteenth, and the fire was incendiary. Suspicion, put on the scent by the night-watchman's story, pointed to Tike Bryerson as the criminal. The old moonshiner, in the bickering stage of intoxication, had been seen hanging about the new plant during the day, and had made vague threats in the hearing of various ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... attractive place in which to live. There were men there who wrote like geniuses and quarreled like children. Father Taylor said that if Emerson were sent to hell, he would start emigration in that direction. The refugees from France made Geneva popular, and all the bickering added spice to existence and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... Fraight at Accomack, but they hoyse up there sayles, and back againe to Yorke River, where with a Marvellous celerity they surprise one Major Cheise-Man, and som others, amongst whom one Capt. Wilford, who (it is saide) in the bickering lost one of his eyes, which he seemed little concern'd at, as knowing that when he came to Accomack, that though he had bin starke blinde, yet the Governour would take care for to afford him a guide, that should show him the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... I saw the human lair, I heard the huckster's bawl, I stifled with the thickened air Of bickering mart and stall. ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... Wanhope there in these sympathetic moments, and where Wanhope was there would probably be Rulledge, passively willing to listen and agree, and Minver ready to interrupt and dispute. I myself liked to look in and linger for either the reasoning or the bickering, as it happened, and now, seeing the three there together, I took a provisional seat behind the painter, who made no sign of knowing I was present. Rulledge was eating a caviar sandwich, which he had brought from the afternoon tea-table near by, and he greedily incited Wanhope to go on, in the ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... King. But the place was untenable. Newcastle's Parliament would not support him; the Duke of Cumberland opposed him; the King hated him; and in April 1757, he was dismissed. Then ensued eleven weeks of bickering and dispute, during which, in the midst of a great war, England was left without a government. It became clear that none was possible without Pitt; and none with him could be permanent and strong unless joined with ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Miss Taylor I would try to fix things for her. I went upstairs and plotted with Elfreda. Then she and I bearded the dragon in her den. After I had finished telling her that it would be better to take little Miss Taylor without further bickering, Elfreda rose to the occasion and gave her a much-needed lecture. She is very shrewd, I think. She evidently realized she had gone too far. She objected to Miss Taylor because it is her nature to object to everything. When she saw that we had taken up the cudgels in Miss Taylor's behalf, and that ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... There was not much bickering. In the shadow of certain death, these outlaws of the sea seemed to have acquired a spirit of resignation which was akin to dignity. They had lost the game. In their own lingo, it was the black spot for all hands of 'em. With the coolness of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... in a policeman's club, while a "moral equivalent" happens to be pale like the stuff of which dreams are made. To the politician whose daily life consists in dodging the thousand and one conflicting prejudices of his constituents, in bickering with committees, intriguing and playing for the vote; to the business man harassed on four sides by the trust, the union, the law, and public opinion,—distrustful of any wide scheme because the stupidity of his shipping clerk is the most vivid item in his mind, all this ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... order to unite in your common success! You know that England and America have nothing to do with all this; that mutual sympathy ought to bind you together against the dangers of the journey! If the North Pole is discovered, what difference does it make who does it? Why stand bickering about English or American, when we can be proud of ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... the crop and offered it. As he did so, the horse became restive, and there was quite a substantial bickering before his mistress could accept the whip. Anthony, if he thought about it at all, attributed the scene to caprice. In this he was right, yet wrong. Caprice was the indirect reason. The direct cause was the heel of a little hunting-boot adroitly ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... exclusively from the old conservative party. Whenever the conservatives obtained the majority in the House of Assembly, the reformers, in retaliation, as systematically opposed every measure. Thus a constant bickering was kept up between the parties in Parliament; while the people, amidst these attentions, lost sight of the true interests of the country, and improvements of all kinds came nearly to a stand-still. As matters were ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... start; but as the hour proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another Alpine valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering along the foot. You have had your moment; but you have not changed the scene. The mountains are about you like a trap; you cannot foot it up a hillside and behold the sea as a great plain, but live in holes and corners, and can ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... corps occupied a position opposite the Confederate right. Johnston finding himself on the 26th overlapped by Schofield, still farther to Wood's left, retired his right (Polk) across a creek, whither we followed him into the woods with a deal of desultory bickering, and at nightfall had established the new lines at nearly a right angle with the old—Schofield reaching well around and threatening ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... suggested that the artist in question was no painter of animals. Then why did he not get a painter of animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, though it is notorious that artists combine without bickering to do these things; and one puts his name on the animal, the other on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... sombre vessel rides Where my obscure condition hides. Waves scud to shore against the wind That flings the sprinkling surf behind; In port the bickering pennons show Which way the ships would gladly go; Through Edgecumb Park the rooted trees Are tossing, reckless, in the breeze; On top of Edgecumb's firm-set tower, As foils, not foibles, of its power, The light vanes do themselves adjust ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... nothing fresh transpired, and the bickering between the couples, assumed on the part of the men and virulent on the part of their wives, went from bad to worse. It was evident that the ladies preferred it to any other amusement life on ship-board could offer, and, ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... "You've been neglecting my education lately, by the way. I wish you'd read something. Let me choose a book." So speaking, she went across to his bookshelves and began looking in a desultory way among his books. Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove home to her the distance between them. As she pulled one book forward and then another she thought ironically of her own certainty not an hour ago; how it had vanished in a moment, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... 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 ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... That's what I've always said. There's so much esprit de corps and good feeling amongst Amateurs—none of that wretched jealousy and bickering which ruins professionals. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various

... you manned the gun Armorial. What cheerings did you share, Impulsive in the van, When down upon leagued France and Spain We English ran— The freshet at your bowsprit Like the foam upon the can. Bickering, your colors Licked up the Spanish air, You flapped with flames of battle-flags— Your challenge, Temeraire! The rear ones of our fleet They yearned to share your place, Still vying with the Victory Throughout that earnest race— The Victory, whose Admiral, With orders nobly won, Shone in the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... the mill those sultry evenings, with the heat mists still tremulous over the valley and heat lightnings bickering in the west, she went with a lagging step up the village street, not looking, as had been her wont, first toward the far blue mountains, and then at the glorious state of the big valley. The houses of the operatives were set up haphazard and the village was ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... here's the happiest light can lie on ground, Grass sloping under trees Alive with yellow shine of daffodils! If quicksilver were gold, And troubled pools of it shaking in the sun It were not such a fancy of bickering gleam As Ryton daffodils when the air but stirs. And all the miles and miles of meadowland The spring makes golden ways, Lead here, for here the gold Grows brightest for our eyes, And for our hearts lovelier even than love. So here, each spring, our ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... skin. A battalion of tongues began to chatter as the red-faced waiters rushed between the tables, taking orders. It was after eleven o'clock, and through the swinging doors passed a throng of motley people, fanning, gossiping, bickering—all eager and thirsty. Clarence Steyle pointed out the celebrities with conscious delight. Over yonder—that man with the mixed gray hair—was a composer who came every night for inspiration,—musical and otherwise, Clarence added, with a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... together halfpence or the darkened souls in Edinburgh; while Balquhidder and Dunrossness bemoans the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, free- will, or absolute foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering mazes whence there was no issue. Province against province, city against city, family against family; it was one vast scene of bickering, denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual excommunication ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... idea; and it is consequently unreasonable to expect from them any genuine freedom or originality of thought. I can forgive them their assumption of superiority, their inability to meet honest scepticism with anything like fairness, their continual bickering among themselves; but I cannot forgive them the harm they are doing to religion, the discredit they are bringing upon it by their bigoted views and obsolete ideas. They busy themselves doing good—that is the worst of it; they mean well, but they do not ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... union—and they clung together with great tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more cordial charity, then, than at present; notwithstanding all our ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... morals. Why this should be the case, it is impossible even to conjecture, the fact only remaining that it is so. Perhaps there are so many different standards of morality, that humanity, weary of the eternal bickering consequent upon the conflicts entered into for their enforcement, have made for themselves a new interpretation which they find less difficult to observe, and find more peace and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... calmly, with a cunning that nearly trapped me. For when I tried to recall, as I thought I could, a specific and convincing instance of his evasion, I realised that to cite a case would only draw us into an irrelevant bickering over side issues. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... preacher, refused to allow him a regular parish, but employed him in moving about from place to place conducting retreats. We would now call him a traveling evangelist. Monasteries and nunneries are very human institutions, and quibble, strife, jealousy, bickering, faction and feud play an important part ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... of talking and bickering which should make one very careful in choosing a lodging. Never let it be near a traghetto; for at traghetti there is talk incessant, day and night: argument, abuse, and raillery. The prevailing tone is that of ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... know, Jane, that this cannot be. You never will enjoy peace under your mother's roof. The sighing heart and the saddened features will forever upbraid her, and bickering and repining will mar every domestic scene. Your mother's aversion to me is far from irreconcilable, but that which will hasten reconcilement will be marriage. You cannot forfeit her love as long as you preserve your integrity; and those scruples which no argument will dissipate ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... Julia often did other lessons, though this was quite contrary to the express orders of her father, who was very anxious that his children should have a "proper regard for the day." There was continual bickering, many disputes and petty quarrels, and when bed-time came every one was weary and cross, and seemed glad the day was over. No wonder that Ruth often longed and sighed for one of the happy ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley

... the Prince of Wales, who hitherto had seemingly kept aloof from the quarrel, suddenly stepped forward and abruptly interposed the weight of his authority and of his social position between the bickering adversaries. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... bickering with all others, should be taken to a physician. Get him right nervously, physically, first. He is out of harmony with himself and so cannot find harmony with others. When the condition of habitual bickering seems to afflict all the children in the family, it cannot ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... and recognised at every turn in a survey of the ground. In both there are the ashen spears; there are the shepherds of the people; the retainers bound by loyalty to the prince who gives them meat and drink; the great hall with its minstrelsy, its boasting and bickering; the battles which are a number of single combats, while "physiology supplies the author with images"[1] for the same; the heroic rule of conduct ([Greek: iomen])[2]; the eminence of the hero, and at the same ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... man so happily disposed, unhappy? What could cause discomfort, bickering, and estrangement in a family so friendly and united? Ladies, it was not my fault—it was Mrs. Chuff's doing—but the rest of the tale you shall ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... quarrel arose between John Smith and Edward-Maria Wingfield, two whose temperaments seem to have been poles apart. There arose a "scandalous report, that Smith meant to reach Virginia only to usurp the Government, murder the Council, and proclaim himself King." The bickering deepened into forthright quarrel, with at last the expected explosion. Smith was arrested, was put in irons, and first saw Virginia as ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... grown impotent of toil, Let the grave sceptre slip his lazy hold; And, careless, saw his rule become the spoil Of a loose Female and her minion bold. But peace was on the cottage and the fold, From Court intrigue, from bickering faction far; Beneath the chestnut-tree Love's tale was told, And to the tinkling of the light guitar, Sweet stooped the western sun, sweet rose the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... Scotch are the peat, for they will smolder and you will never come to the end of them. I have had many happy hours on the marches of Scotland, for even if there be no war the Percies of Alnwick or the Governor of Carlisle can still raise a little bickering with ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had nothing to do, but the very sight of their red coats made the colonists angry. They taunted the soldiers, and worried them every way they knew, and the soldiers were not slow to reply. So at last after eighteen months of bickering one March evening it came to blows. Two or three exasperated soldiers fired upon the crowd of citizens, five of whom were ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... nor hurry, no bickering nor envying, no crowding nor thieving there. Heart's Desire! It was well named, indeed; fit capital for the malcontents who sought oblivion, dreaming, long as they might, that Life can be left aside when one ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... be so great as it might seem at first glance. Trials would probably be much shorter than the endless, senseless bickering in courts, the long time wasted in selecting juries and the many irrelevant issues on which guilt or innocence are often determined, make necessary now. Most of the criminal cases would likewise be prevented if the state would undertake to improve ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... had entered into a general free fight in the runway, but the noise of their bickering was unheeded in the excitement of the contest in the exhibition cage. Depew rose as Miller cracked his whip and approached him, and made a rush which the trainer met with his pronged training rod, driving it hard between the widely opened jaws while his whip rained blows upon the tiger's face. But ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... recitation seriously. It must not be a cause for levity when several pupils fail. Failure must come to be looked forward to with apprehension, and looked back upon with humiliation. And all this must be done without scolding and bickering. It must be done with great patience and good nature, but it must be done. The teacher must himself have a high standard of excellence, and must persistently impress this upon his class. Here again the ideals of ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... the culprits; but he did it craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... the whistling man were still within hearing when Tom swung Nan lightly to the ground and dropped beside her. No word was spoken until she had emptied and refilled her bucket at the spring, then Tom said, with the bickering tang ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... Cockayne, to grant Cockayne a patent for the creation of a home-dyeing industry, reserving to the crown a monopoly for the sale of the goods. The Adventurers complained of this as a breach of their charter; and, after much bickering, the king in 1615 settled the dispute by withdrawing the charter. Cockayne now hoped that the company he had formed would be a profitable concern, but he and the king were doomed to disappointment. The Estates of Holland refused ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... residence hot and tired after an exhausting day. It chanced that at a meeting of the Ministry, which he attended late in the afternoon, the question of Beliani's appointment as Minister of Finance came up for settlement. It was not determined without some bickering, and an undercurrent of dislike if not of positive hatred of the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... likes his brother,—and most fellows do,—there is scant use or grace or common-sense in keeping up, from mere carelessness, or through an irritable habit, a continual bickering, for these germs of evil are possessed of a marvelous faculty for growth, and some day their gigantic deformities will confront you in deeds of which you ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... were rapidly outliving the sudden friendship of Rad's sick days, when it was thought he might be blind for life, and were dropping back into their old ways of bickering and rivalry ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... conflicts with which we are familiar. At the time we regarded it as a triumph of American diplomacy when Japan, in the face of California's threatening attitude, apparently gave in after a little diplomatic bickering and issued the well-known proclamation concerning emigration to Hawaii and the Pacific States, at the same time dissolving several ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... you blighter!' he snarled. 'Oh, for God's sake, no—we mustn't start bickering alongside of that!' He forced his eyes to look down again at the corpse, and shuddered. 'The tide's going ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... Moses," there was no evidence of its existence except the Courier's assertion. Nevertheless, it considered Davis "an incubus to the cause." The controversy between the Mercury and the Courier at Charleston was paralleled at Richmond by the constant bickering between the government organ, the Enquirer, and the Examiner, which shares with the Mercury the first place among the newspapers hostile ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... at a very low ebb. She was still touring the provinces, and heartily sick of all the discomfort involved. Dingy lodgings, hurried train journeys, much bickering and jealousy in the company with which she was acting, and a great deal of domestic worry over that handsome, extravagant mother, who had once taken her, in company with the so-called uncle, to the select seminary of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... you do not seem, M. de Berault, to comprehend the difficulty. If we do not settle things now, we shall be bickering twenty ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... again, back to the old difficulty, only worse. Idleness descended on us again. We grew touchy on little things, as a misplaced plate, a shortage of firewood, too deep a draught at the nearly empty bucket. The noise of bickering became as constant as the noise of the surf. If we valued peace, we kept our mouths shut. The way a man spat, or ate, or slept, or even breathed became a cause of irritation to every other member of the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Emperor Frederick II. had not only succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother. The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man who became Pope in 1227, and in 1238 Gregory excommunicated Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the Church. As the king of England was his vassal in consequence of John's ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... made his rustle, he has had his wings, he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.' Ah! you take the cockchafer by the horns. That's good. I offer you a cutlet and you answer me: 'By the way, I want to marry.' There's a transition for you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I am an old coward. What do you say to that? You are vexed? You did not expect to find your grandfather still more foolish than yourself, you are wasting the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that's vexatious. Well, so much ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... relieved of his command, which nevertheless had not been given to Buell, but to Halleck, a man of unproved powers, a theorist, sluggish, irresolute. Foot by foot his troops, always deployed in line-of-battle to resist the enemy's bickering skirmishers, always entrenching against the columns that never came, advanced across the thirty miles of forest and swamp toward an antagonist prepared to vanish at contact, like a ghost at cock-crow. It was a campaign of "excursions and alarums," of reconnoissances ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... all that was possible out of our partial successes, drive the enemy out of our country wherever he had a foot-hold, otherwise the South would slowly but surely crumble away. So much had been expected of Longstreet's Corps in East Tennessee, and so little lasting advantage gained, that bickering among the officers began. Brigadier Generals were jealous of Major Generals, and even some became jealous or dissatisfied with General Longstreet himself. Crimination and recrimination were indulged in, censures and charges ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... tale of the afternoon's experience by the tempest at the other end of the table, turned toward the twins impatiently. "Stop your eternal bickering, you two!" he ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... ever seen. After my experience of this world I could almost wish that I had been born an Esquimaux. They are very fond of their children and take the greatest care of them. The children never require to be chastised and are very obedient. One never sees any quarrelling or bickering amongst them. They show the true sport in their games of football and baseball. The other day I noticed a crowd of little tots, in their skin clothes, playing on the snow for several hours as though they ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... Under the fighting fog that beset each one in its own way, there came snatches of song, humming and whistling. There were those, too, who fought silently, as though deeply wrapped in thought, and there was bickering when a hasty comrade crowded too close for free operation of the flying breechbolts; yet the faces were ever turned to the front, except when they turned to the sky or the earth, and nerveless hands ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes

... of passion, Between the bickering fire Where flames of fierce love tremble On the body of ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... all," cried Hsi Jen, at these words, "bickering with me, or with Master Secundus? If you bear me a grudge, you'd better then address your remarks to me alone; albeit it isn't right that you should kick up such a hullaballoo in the presence of Mr. Secundus. But if you have a spite against Mr. Secundus, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... reputation of being a 'peaceful' one, the Germans opposite of being 'tame,' so the reliefs are made in daytime, more or less in safety. There has been no serious fighting here for months. Constant sniping and bickering between the forward firing trenches has, of course, always gone on, but there has been no attack one way or the other, little ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... say, Vicar," said the Major, "that it would be better to throw the four packs into two. Then you would have less squabbling and bickering about the different boundaries, and you would kill the same number of hares ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... candidates he was not less successful. Irving Hall insisted upon naming the mayor, and for many weeks the bickering and bargaining of conference committees resulted in nothing. Finally, Kelly proposed that the regulars select several satisfactory persons from whom he would choose. Among those submitted was the name of William Russell Grace, a respected merchant, a native ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Did Aunt Miriam mean her? What other little girl might she take with her? But she had said "a good little maid," and Naomi remembered with a pang of regret how she and Ezra had quarreled yesterday, and had not ceased their bickering until at sunset the three blasts of the silver trumpet, blown by the priest on the synagogue roof, had reminded them that ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... theirs in the same positions. If it appeared that the John of five centuries before had been under the Peter of that period, the modern Peter was too proud to accept a similar position under the modern John. And so it went, until court life became a constant scene of bickering and discontent, and of murmurs at the most trifling slights and neglects. In short, it became necessary that an office of genealogy should be established at court, in which exact copies of the family trees and service registers of the noble families were kept, and the officers here employed ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a prudent precaution as the Manbo is not very methodical in his affairs nor quick in his movements. A thousand and one things—omens, sickness, bad weather—may delay him in the fulfillment of his contract. It is this tardiness that gives rise to the ill feeling and bickering that are not infrequently the outcome of this system of trading. The Manbo, moreover, has long since become aware of the stupendous gain made by the traders, and, when not dealt with gently, becomes exasperated and on occasions deliberately delays his creditor. Then again, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... cave, which here rose very high, was illuminated by torches made of pine-tree, which emitted a bright and bickering light, attended by a strong though not unpleasant odour. Their light was assisted by the red glare of a large charcoal fire, round which were seated five or six armed Highlanders, while others were indistinctly seen couched on their plaids, in the more remote recesses ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... so much perplexity to railroad managers, would soon be solved if railroad abuses were done away with. So long as these abuses exist and rates are maintained by artificial means there will be bickering and strife for business which legitimately belongs to others. Mr. Walker then bewails the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... this bickering," said Miss Fosbrook. "I can't see you trying which can be most provoking. Stand up. Now, David, say grace. There, Annie, finish that bit of bread out of doors. Go out, and let us ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... tyrannies and persecutions, their calculated courage and bravado or sedulously hidden cowardice, it might all be some human chapter from the annals of the old Rhineland or medieval Italy. And then, outside their own bickering wars and hates, the grim enemies that come up against them from the woodlands; the hawk that dashes among the coops like a moss-trooper raiding the border, knowing well that a charge of shot may tear him to bits at any moment. And the stoat, a creeping slip of brown fur a ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... gives an account of the bickering and recrimination at Southampton, when all parties had arrived. Pastor Robinson had rather too strenuously given instructions, which it now began to be seen were not altogether wise. Cushman was very much censured, and there was evidently some acrimony. See Cushman's Dartmouth ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... drawing room to another. They strive to get their pieces played; they previously submit them to the judgment of actors; they solicit a word of praise from the Mercure; they read fables at the sittings of the Academy. They become involved in the bickering, in the vainglory, in the pettiness of literary life, and still worse, of the life of the stage, inasmuch as they are themselves performers and play in company with real actors in hundreds of private theaters. Add ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine



Words linked to "Bickering" :   words, dustup, row, quarrel, wrangle, run-in



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com