Crossword clues for bickering
bickering
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bickering \Bick"er*ing\, n.
A skirmishing. ``Frays and bickerings.''
--Milton.Altercation; wrangling.
Bicker \Bick"er\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Bickered; p. pr. & vb. n. Bickering.] [OE. bikeren, perh. fr. Celtic; cf. W. bicra to fight, bicker, bicre conflict, skirmish; perh. akin to E. beak.]
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To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight. [Obs.]
Two eagles had a conflict, and bickered together.
--Holland. -
To contend in petulant altercation; to wrangle.
Petty things about which men cark and bicker.
--Barrow. -
To move quickly and unsteadily, or with a pattering noise; to quiver; to be tremulous, like flame.
They [streamlets] bickered through the sunny shade.
--Thomson.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "a skirmish," from bicker (v.). Meaning "a verbal wrangle" is from 1570s.
1808 in the sense of "contentious," present participle adjective from bicker (v.). Earlier it was used to mean "flashing, quivering" (1660s).
Wiktionary
n. Petty quarreling. Usually considered a childish behaviour, although often applied to adults. vb. (present participle of bicker English)
WordNet
Usage examples of "bickering".
At last after bickering and quarrelling and false starts away the farmer yielded for half again the worth of an ox in those parts.
Sometimes I can almost believe I hear the Marys laughing and bickering and chattering.
And if Reever and I stopped bickering long enough to take our kid and leave the ship, Hawk could certainly come along.
It disturbed Laura to see the faint bickering that occurred these days between Rhoda and Seth over trifles that normally both would have ignored.
Cecile said after an evening when the bickering between Rhoda and Seth had become almost hostile.
As always she was uncomfortable listening to the mild bickering between Seth and Rhoda, even while she understood the tensions under which they both lived these days.
They dispatched ship carpenters where needed, appointed chaplains, and faced the incessant day-to-day frustrations of bickering, jealousies, and corruption.
After a good deal of fuss and bickering, Congress had at last approved an Act Providing a Naval Armament.
Two of his mobile phones are bickering moronically, disputing ownership of his grid bandwidth.
She was generally at the centre of things, surrounded by a bickering and admiring crowd of seemingly lesser mortals, which sometimes included Jalila.
The car was parked in the patch of red dust by the front porch, and the six departing members of the group were standing on the porch bickering about what to take along.
Within minutes they were all bickering as if it were more than thirty years ago.
In this manner, each side will be encouraged to put aside petty bickering or have little time for the maintenance of its own temple.
As to the society of the monks, the discord, envy, and all the bickerings inseparable from such a mode of life, I thought I had nothing to pass in that way, since I had no ambitions which could rouse the jealousy of the other monks.
The Russians struggled pettily among themselves, expending the last energies of a once-glorious nation in puerile bickerings.