Other forms: squabbles, squabbling, squabbled
To squabble is to quarrel noisily about something petty. Squabble over toys, they squabbled, a squabble broke out.
The pettiness is built in — nobody squabbles about something important — which is why it suits children and committees. It is noisy rather than bitter and it usually ends by itself. Note that the word is probably Scandinavian and imitative of the sound, which is about as good an origin as a word like this can have.
1verbsquabbleTo quarrel noisily about something petty.
“The two sisters squabbled over who would get the last biscuit.”
2nounnoisyA noisy petty quarrel.
“The children had a squabble over who got the front seat of the car.”
squabble is a petty quarrel.
Squabble is probably Scandinavian and imitative of the noise of quarrelling. A Swedish dialect word for a dispute is related.
Borrowed from gmq -. The noun form first appears c. 1602, while the verbal form first appears c. 1616. Probably of gmq - origin and ultimately imitative of the sound. Related to Swedish - dialectal skvabbel (“a dispute, quarrel, gossip”), Norwegian - dialectal skvabba (“to prattle”), German - dialectal schwabbeln (“to babble, prattle”), Swedish - dialectal skvappa (“to chide, scold”) literally “make a splash”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire