passage at arms vs spat

passage at arms

spat

verb
  • To slap, as with the open hand; to clap together, as the hands. 

  • To spawn. Used of shellfish as above. 

  • To quarrel or argue briefly. 

  • To strike with a spattering sound. 

noun
  • A covering or decorative covering worn over a shoe. 

  • A brief argument, falling out, quarrel. 

  • A juvenile shellfish which has attached to a hard surface. 

  • A drag-reducing aerodynamic fairing covering the upper portions of the tyres of an aeroplane equipped with non-retractable landing gear. 

  • A piece of bodywork that covers the upper portions of the rear tyres of a car. 

  • An obsolete unit of distance in astronomy (symbol S), equal to one billion kilometres. 

  • A light blow with something flat. 

  • The spawn of shellfish, especially oysters and similar molluscs. 

How often have the words passage at arms and spat occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )