[f. as prec.]
1. Engaging in, given to, petty quarrelling or wrangling.
1632. Sherwood, Squabbling, noiseux, rioteux.
1665. Glanvill, Def. Van. Dogm., p. vi. In a squabbling and contentious Age.
1771. Beattie, Minstr., I. xvii. Nor cared [he] to mingle in the clamorous fray Of squabbling imps.
1841. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xliii. A dozen squabbling urchins made a very Babel in the air.
1894. T. Roosevelt, in Forum, April, 198. Not one great Spanish-American federal nation stretching fro the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, but a squabbling multitude of revolution-ridden States, not one of which stands even in the second rank as a power.
2. Of the nature of, characterized by, dispute or wrangling.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., III. 184. Ignorance … varnish’d over with a little squabling Sophistry.
1833. T. Hook, Parson’s Dau., III. xii. There had arisen some squabbling differences amongst his noble passengers.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul (1883), 51. The partisans … thrust their squabbling Judaism even into the intercourse between a Paul and a Peter.
