bicker
/ˈbɪkə
/verb [no object]
1Argue about petty and trivial matters: couples who bicker over who gets what from the divorce...
- They fight and bicker over nothing, over petty cultural differences.
- Additionally, the two sides routinely bicker over the disputed islands, a supposedly oil-rich area.
- ‘People expect us to do what we can to work together, at least most of the time,’ he added, indicating a bid to stop bickering between rival political factions on the authority.
Synonyms
squabble, argue;
quarrel, wrangle, fight, fall out, have a disagreement, disagree, dispute, spar, bandy words, have words, be at each other's throats, lock horns
informal scrap, argufy, have a tiff, have a spat, spat
British informal row, have a row, have a barney
archaic altercate, chop logic
2 literary (Of water) flow or fall with a gentle repetitive noise; patter: against the glass the rain did beat and bicker...
- The sound of rain bickering outside his window was driving him crazy.
- The sound of water bickering down the winding way of a stream gave life and coolness to the warm silence.
- A path led in the foot of it, the water bickered and sang in the midst.
2.1(Of a flame or light) flash, gleam, or flicker: the restless wheels whose flashing spokes bicker and burn...
- How the flame bickers, and quivers, and flickers, darting its eager tongues about!
- In one or two instances there has appeared, when the light was totally excluded, a faint lambent flame bickering over them.
- And a wood-fire bickered on the iron-work fire-back, under whose oak over-mantel Sir Philip sat with us ten minutes, then took himself away into his own sequestered nook of the house.
Derivatives
bickerer
- This towering lack of interest is quite unusual in the region, because we love to have something to bicker about and what could give us a better cause for bickering than the professional bickerers themselves.
- From the very beginning, the anchorman ripped into the famous bickerers and was unrelenting throughout.
- If you wait for all the bickerers, backbiters, and foot draggers to come to accord, you'll never get anything done.
Origin
Middle English: of unknown origin.