squabble

«squabble» in Mova's school dictionary: to argue noisily about something small and unimportant — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (squabble, squabbles, squabbled, squabbling); noun (a squabble, squabbles)

meaning for a pupil

1) To squabble is to argue noisily about something small and unimportant. tree →

2) A squabble is a small, silly argument. tree →

sense in the lessons

In family life and stories, siblings squabble over the TV remote, the front seat or the last biscuit. Lessons on friends and families teach how to stop squabbling: take turns, share, listen. In the news, politicians' squabbles are minor quarrels. Birds such as seagulls squabble over food.

examples

• My brother and I squabbled over the last slice of pizza. tree →
• Stop squabbling and take turns! tree →
• The twins had a squabble about whose turn it was. tree →
• Seagulls squabbled over a chip on the beach. tree →
• The kids squabbled all the way to the seaside. tree →
• It was just a little squabble; they were friends again by lunchtime. tree →
• The politicians squabbled about the new road. tree →
• Without me they'll be orphans left, and from door to door have to beg their bread and squabble with dogs." tree →

note

Double b: squabble. Drop the e before -ing: squabbling. A squabble is smaller and sillier than a fight or a quarrel.

In the corpora

• Sea lions often squabble loudly over the best resting spots on the rocks.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «squabble» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.