argument vs spat

argument

noun
  • A verbal dispute; a quarrel. 

  • An abstract or summary of the content of a literary work such as a book, a poem or a major section such as a chapter, included in the work before the content itself; (figuratively) the contents themselves. 

  • Any dispute, altercation, or collision. 

  • The independent variable of a function. 

  • A value, or a reference to a value, passed to a function. 

  • A parameter at a function call; an actual parameter, as opposed to a formal parameter. 

  • Any of the phrases that bears a syntactic connection to the verb of a clause. 

  • A fact or statement used to support a proposition; a reason. 

  • A process of reasoning; argumentation. 

  • The phase of a complex number. 

  • A quantity on which the calculation of another quantity depends. 

  • A series of propositions organized so that the final proposition is a conclusion which is intended to follow logically from the preceding propositions, which function as premises. 

spat

noun
  • A brief argument, falling out, quarrel. 

  • A covering or decorative covering worn over a shoe. 

  • 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. 

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. 

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