spar vs spat

spar

verb
  • To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do. 

  • To contest in words; to wrangle. 

  • To supply or equip (a vessel) with spars. 

  • To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat. 

noun
  • Any crystal with readily discernible faces. 

  • A rafter of a roof. 

  • A thick pole or piece of wood. 

  • A beam-like structural member that supports ribs in an aircraft wing or other airfoil. 

  • A sparring session; a preliminary fight, as in boxing or cock-fighting. 

  • Any of various microcrystalline minerals, of light, translucent, or transparent appearance, which are easily cleft. 

  • Any linear object used as a mast, sprit, yard, boom, pole or gaff. 

spat

verb
  • To strike with a spattering sound. 

  • 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. 

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 spar and spat occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )