(n.) A young oyster or other bivalve mollusk, both before and after it first becomes adherent, or such young, collectively.
(v. i. & t.) To emit spawn; to emit, as spawn.
(n.) A light blow with something flat.
(n.) Hence, a petty combat, esp. a verbal one; a little quarrel, dispute, or dissension.
(v. i.) To dispute.
(v. t.) To slap, as with the open hand; to clap together; as the hands.
() of Spit
Example Sentences:
(1) But the Franco-British spat sparked by Dave's rejection of Angela and Nicolas's cunning plan to save the euro has been given wings by news the US credit agencies may soon strip France of its triple-A rating and is coming along very nicely, thank you. "
(2) If wide notice is taken of a current spat over what we can read about Shakespeare’s sexuality into the sonnets in the correspondence columns of the Times Literary Supplement, Sonnet 20 may be a future favourite at civil unions.
(3) He wanted to stay on longer than the traditional retirement age but became involved in a nasty spat with the then-chairman, Peter Sutherland.
(4) He’s spat on and has wee thrown at him.” Rutherford is also concerned about the governance of the sport.
(5) Venom entered the eyes of 9 patients spat at by the spitting cobra, Naja nigricollis.
(6) The British parliament’s vote against airstrikes has long been cited by Obama and others as a causal factor but Kerry made the link explicit just a week after a diplomatic spat with the UK’s prime minister, Theresa May, over a United Nations resolution that condemned Israel.
(7) The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has attempted to seize the initiative in the bitter spat on energy prices by pledging a 20-month freeze .
(8) She had been sworn at and spat on – anything to force the expression they wanted on to her face.
(9) Some said they saw stones; others said they had been spat at.
(10) The England winger has been training with the under-21s for the past two and a half months after being frozen out by Mauricio Pochettino in the wake of his public spat with Nathan Gardiner, Tottenham’s fitness coach, following a win against Aston Villa in November.
(11) By the time the latest spat came before the FCC, Karr argues, net activists had sharpened their tactics and raised their game.
(12) Still alive, he was then surrounded by people who cursed and spat at him, kicked him in the head and tried to hit him with a chair.
(13) The Greece midfielder Giannis Maniatis was so enraged after a training ground spat that he booked a himself on a flight back to Athens before being persuaded not to walk out on Fernando Santos’s squad.
(14) Mariano Rajoy said he did not want the dispute to "go further", after a spat about fishing escalated into a full-blown diplomatic row with Britain.
(15) They are saying she needs to realise that she needs to build allies.” The Tory source spoke out after Kenneth Clarke blew into the open a spat between the Conservative leadership and the home secretary’s team after two of May’s special advisers declined to take part in telephone canvassing in the recent Rochester and Strood byelection.
(16) It is understood Cameron and the Lib Dem leader have agreed to cool the coalition tensions that have boiled over into public spats – and there were signs yesterday that was having some effect after it was clear that Labour was making capital from the dispute.
(17) Padoan said the US's budget spat posed significant threats to the US and the global economy but said that Europe presented a larger challenge.
(18) However, after several years of improving relations and increasing trade, China and Japan have much to lose from a prolonged deterioration in ties, and will be wary of letting the spat get out of hand.
(19) Ahmadinejad has been drawn into a bruising power struggle with the conservatives, many of them his former supporters, and has mounted serious challenges to Khamenei, such as engaging in public spats with top-level officials.
(20) Former Netanyahu aide lambasts US ambassador in heated spat Read more “These provocative acts are bound to increase the growth of settler populations, further heighten tensions and undermine any prospects for a political road ahead,” Ban told a United Nations security council meeting on the Middle East.
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.