What's the difference between altercation and squabble?

Altercation


Definition:

  • (n.) Warm contention in words; dispute carried on with heat or anger; controversy; wrangle; wordy contest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mitchell was forced to quit his cabinet post as chief whip over claims he called officers "plebs" during an altercation in Downing Street, which he denies.
  • (2) They were there for an hour and there was definitely no 'altercation' as this person is making out.
  • (3) The Ukip leadership contender Steven Woolfe has been discharged from hospital after an altercation with a fellow MEP.
  • (4) Costa was sent off with six minutes remaining in his side’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat on Saturday after an altercation with Gareth Barry.
  • (5) Fatal traumatic thrombosis of the left internal carotid artery occurred in a 38-year-old man following minor blunt cervical trauma during an altercation.
  • (6) On the leaks to the media of the original altercation, which was passed to the Sun, and of an email describing what happened, which has become known as the official log, which was given to the Daily Telegraph, she said that because there was no evidence of payment a jury was likely to decide that it was in the public interest for the events at the Downing Street gate to be made public.
  • (7) A white man and an African American woman got into a brief altercation over politics, and officers loaded a handful of protesters into an NYPD van, placing their belongings into plastic bags one by one.
  • (8) Willing to send himself up for advertising campaigns but taking his art extremely seriously, Cantona has at times been repulsed by the media (most obviously in his post-Selhurst Park suspension phase but also in a more recent altercation with a paparazzo in north London) but also used it to his advantage.
  • (9) Madison’s police chief, Mike Koval, said at a press conference that an officer shot a 19-year-old, who he said was responsible for a recent battery, during an altercation.
  • (10) But police apparently did not even tape off the area around the altercation – a basic requirement to secure a crime scene and gather forensic evidence.
  • (11) One man who tried to stop the altercation was also punched.
  • (12) The incident was not the only altercation at the Trump campaign event on Saturday.
  • (13) Eric Holder , the US attorney general, said at a press conference in Washington: “Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of officer Wilson.” The decision ended the second half of a politically-charged investigation into Wilson’s shooting of Brown on 9 August following an altercation in a residential side-street.
  • (14) Hours earlier, Ulivarri’s son, Luís Carlos, 23, had been shot in a bar, and then dragged into the night after an altercation with a group of men presumed to be members of a local drug cartel.
  • (15) Many street disputes are not gang or even clique related, but the climate of violence created by the gangs, with their ready access to arms, means that a Hobbesian, kill-or-be-killed mentality can afflict even the most minor altercations.
  • (16) The polarisation of the club’s stands into separate areas that are almost all white and stands that are ethnically mixed proved a backdrop for violent race altercations between the club’s own fans.
  • (17) The meeting was called ostensibly to clear the air after revelations about an altercation Mitchell had had with Metropolitan police officers in Downing Street, when he was the government's chief whip.
  • (18) The altercation in Downing Street on 19 September last year took place after two police officers on duty refused to let him ride his bicycle through the gates.
  • (19) Alan Pardew denied head-butting Hull's David Meyler in a touchline altercation but conceded he would be "stupid" not to expect the Football Association to come down hard on him in the coming days.
  • (20) The officer chased the man, an altercation ensued and the man fired at the officer, the police chief said.

Squabble


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To contend for superiority in an unseemly maner; to scuffle; to struggle; to wrangle; to quarrel.
  • (v. i.) To debate peevishly; to dispute.
  • (v. t.) To disarrange, so that the letters or lines stand awry or are mixed and need careful readjustment; -- said of type that has been set up.
  • (n.) A scuffle; a wrangle; a brawl.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On Thursday the word in Brussels was there would be fresh elections in April, a ballot likely to entrench the divide, deepen the crisis of political accountability and legitimacy, and result in yet further months of government-less squabbling.
  • (2) But living in modern Britain feels like being one of a family of anxious, squabbling children whose parents have abandoned us to get drunk at the casino.
  • (3) What we are seeing is the government really squabbling over what is such an important and profound piece of legislation for our country, like kids in a schoolyard.” Shorten told reporters on Sunday the government’s citizenship laws were “rapidly descending into a farce”, and called on it to urgently release the text of the legislation so Labor could scrutinise it.
  • (4) Precisely how juvenile was, of course, open to yet more squabbling.
  • (5) My son’s Guyanese-Canadian teacher and the Muslim Milton scholar I went to high school with and the Sikh writer I squabble about Harold Innis with and my Ishmaeli accountant, we can all be good little Torontonians of the middle class, deflecting the differences we have been trained to respect.
  • (6) There is boardroom squabbling, the workforce is in open revolt and there are no new product lines.
  • (7) Nor are they exotic Mafia hits like the killing of Castellano; these are low-level whackings, often linked to squabbles over drugs.
  • (8) At the time they were stressful – battling with traffic, fights over radio stations, squabbles over who was going to sit in the front seat and listening to a muddle of languages together with drama lines and songs to be sung.
  • (9) "The squabbles will be bitter and vicious if the first salvoes in this war are anything to go by.
  • (10) Amid squabbles over boundary changes, mansion tax, Europe and the NHS, each of them was up for the fight.
  • (11) Momentum Hastings seems pleasantly free of the kind of dogmatic, acrimonious squabbles that have recently engulfed the movement at national level.
  • (12) Likewise, he feels, parenting is too important to fall foul of party political squabbles.
  • (13) We kids had obviously been squabbling and had been banned from making any noise or, "I'll stop the car and bang your heads together!"
  • (14) When superpowers and former superpowers squabble, lives are ruined.
  • (15) Preparatory talks last month in Bangkok ended in acrimonious squabbles .
  • (16) The same can't be said of our squabbles at the decade's end.
  • (17) She had lived for a long time in the shadow of her unfaithful husband, and, uninterested in the perennial squabbles of the Chilean left, the coup turned her into a significant political figure in her own right.
  • (18) A new body is to be elected to do the job, but with arguments raging over the place of Sharia law in that constitution, and with regional leaders squabbling for influence, there is no sign of when those elections will happen.
  • (19) If the experiment has been a disaster for Greece, it is also a colossal failure for Europe , with the result that at the very apex of leadership the EU nowadays resembles an unhappy assembly of squabbling politicians locked in what could not be called an “ever closer union”.
  • (20) From the lawn we could see nothing but tree tops and the only interruption to lazy mornings on the terrace was the noise of squabbling langur monkeys and green parrots.