Word.ws English Dictionary

argle-bargle

argle-bargle noun: a verbal argument.

Noun

argle-bargle (countable and uncountable, plural argle-bargles)

  1. (slang) A verbal argument.
    • Wendell and I have had our share of argle-bargles about the morality of hunting.1992, Rebecca Ward, Grand Deception, page 43
    • As I have said, the real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow, is that DOMA is motivated by '"bare . . . desire to harm"' couples in same-sex marriages.2013, United States v. Windsor, 544 U.S. 744, 799 (2013) (Scalia, J., dissenting)

Verb

argle-bargle (third-person singular simple present argle-bargles, present participle argle-bargling, simple past and past participle argle-bargled)

  1. (slang) To argue.
    • Last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was the upshot. Be damned to your word!1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Captain Knuckles Under”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company...
    Synonyms:
    wringle-wrangle

argle-bargle meaning in Tamil and Bengali

argle-bargle in Tamil

சொற்போர், வாதம்

argle-bargle in Bengali

অর্থহীন ঝগড়া, তর্ক

Synonyms of argle-bargle

Forms of argle-bargle

Noun
pluralargle-bargles
Verb
third-person singular presentargle-bargles
present participleargle-bargling
past participleargle-bargled
pastargle-bargled

Origin of argle-bargle

First documented in English in 1822, from Scots (where first recorded in 1808), from earlier argle (“argue obstinately, wrangle”) used in English since 16th century, presumably from argue + -le (frequentative suffix), though possibly from Old Norse (Suio-Gothic) ierga – possibly influenced by haggle – plus rhyming reduplication, possibly from bargain, found in early variant aurgle-bargain (1720).

Words formed from argle-bargle

Questions about argle-bargle

What does argle-bargle mean?
Argle-bargle means a verbal argument.
What is argle-bargle in Tamil?
Argle-bargle in Tamil is சொற்போர், வாதம். See Argle-bargle meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is argle-bargle?
Argle-bargle can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of argle-bargle?
The plural of argle-bargle is argle-bargles.

Words near argle-bargle in the dictionary

  1. argiotoxins
  2. argipressin
  3. Argirades
  4. Argive
  5. Argives
  6. argle-bargle
  7. argle-bargle morble whoosh
  8. argle-bargled
  9. argle-bargles
  10. argle-bargling
  11. arglist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: argle-bargle (page history and authors); argle-bargle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); argle-bargle (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “argle-bargle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/argle-bargle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.