Past tense of 'argle,' meaning to argue or dispute about something, often in a tedious or pointless way.
From 'argle-bargle,' a 19th-century reduplication expressing futile argument. The exact origin is uncertain, but may derive from dialectal English or Scottish sources. 'Argle' alone became a verb meaning to engage in petty disputation.
The phrase 'argle-bargle' is such a satisfying onomatopoeia for meaningless bickering that the Victorians couldn't resist using it in literature—it's the sound of arguments going nowhere!
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