Quibbling Over Quarrels

As may be the case with many of you, dear readers, A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series serving as the basis for HBO's Game of Thrones) has been occupying far more of my mental energy than I anticipated. If you haven't read the books and are just watching the show, I highly recommend diving into the prose. (You won't have to wait for Season Three to find out what happens next, either.) George R. R. Martin's diction alone has me running through sticky notes like a baker through butter and eggs. One word in particular caught my attention because I didn't know the word could be used in any other sense, and I'd like to share my findings with you.

In modern parlance, a quarrel typically refers to an angry argument, dispute or spat. The severity of the quarrel varies even within the definition, ranging from making a complaint to disagreeing so angrily as to end a friendship. Moreover, a quarrel is specifically defined as a break in friendly relations, whether that break be temporary or permanent.

Can we start calling breakups "lovers' quarrels"? Doesn't it sound so much less, I don't know, divisive?

A lovers' quarrel should not be confused with a lovers' spat, however. They are entirely different things. (At least, if you go by the dictionary.) Despite the thesaurus listing the word among quarrel's synonyms, a spat is actually defined as either "a petty quarrel" or "a light blow, slap or smack." A tiff is even less serious, "a slight or petty quarrel" or "a slight fit of annoyance, bad mood or the like." Keep this handy classification in mind the next time your boo brings up that time you ate the tiramisu she made for his/her grandma's 90th birthday. If you weren't supposed to eat it, it shouldn't have been just lying on the counter, in plain view, tempting you with its mascarpone. You told him/her how much you like mascarpone. Are we talking a spat here or a full-blown squabble? It's good to know the difference.

You can even devise a system to rank the severity of arguments with your spouse in a vein similar to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's color-coded Advisory System. Tiff would be the lowest level, green; followed by Spat, blue; Argument, yellow; and then Quarrel, corresponding to the color orange.*

The trick, of course, is getting your spouse to wear the corresponding color-coordinated jewelry or necktie. Provide complementary ringtones ranging from Queen's "Love of My Life" to the Jaws theme to increase your alert system's effectiveness.

*ahem* Moving on... 

14th-century iron quarrel recovered in Bedfordshire,
on display in the Bedford Museum

The deadlier kind of quarrel fires not from a lover's lips, but from a crossbow. A quarrel in this sense refers to any crossbow bolt or arrow with a four-sided, square head. Seeing as crossbows were destructive enough to earn a papal ban on their use against Christians at the Second Lateran Council (1139), this sort of quarrel could easily end any previous ones born of words.**

Lest we forget, the advent of the crossbow and its ammunition, as a friend once aptly put it, marked "the first time you could cap somebody." ***
Despite Modern English "quarrel" referring to both an argument and a type of ammunition, two separate words coalesced to form the word we know today. Quarrel in the sense of an argument originated from Latin querela, querella, "a complaint," which passed into Old French and then into Middle English as the word querele. The word for the crossbow bolt, on the other hand, stems from the shape of its barb -- it derives from Latin quadrellus, a diminutive of quadrus, an adjective meaning "square." This term in turn entered Old French and then Middle English as quarel. 

Yet authors writing in Middle English did not have a standardized system of spelling like we do now, and the spelling of the same word sometimes varied even within a document. So as time ebbed on, authors began to spell the two words like each other and, indeed, maybe associate the two with each other.

And why not? The barb of a quarrel flies with deadly speed regardless of whether the bowstring or the tongue loosed it, and if it is well-aimed, it can wound regardless of whether it pricks the skin.

Till next time, logonauts.

Information purloined from dictionary.reference.com, the Middle English Dictionary at the University of Michigan, http://www.britannia.com/; images purloined from Wikimedia Commons 

* : "I must say, darling, you look ravishing in that Marriage-Imploding Crimson you're wearing tonight!"
** : Political analysts have since speculated that Pope Innocent II was merely adopting a stronger stance on archery control to ensure his re-election.
*** : The earliest recorded instance of this practice was a medieval horse-drawn carriage ride-by in which 50 Cent's ancestor, Tuppence, was quarreled 57 times; he survived and went on to found the Toulouse Academy for Troubadours and Singers with fellow musician, Chashillionaire.