These words refer to an expressed lack of concurrence between the ideas of two people. Disagree may refer to any verbalized discord, whether trivial or fundamental, whether arising out of a dispute over facts or simply out of a contest of wills: disagreeing over which road to take; disagreeing as to when Shakespeare was born; those who disagree merely for the sake of controversy. Differ is milder than disagree ; it might sound excessively formal to some ears, except in the common phrase, "I beg to differ from you." As a substitution for disagree it can even sound euphemistic: urging them not to differ over so slight a matter. It has a real use, however, when one wishes to suggest lack of agreement that does not arise from hostility: differing on the causes of poverty but agreeing on steps to eradicate it. The word, also, can suggest mere factual discrepancy from which no conclusions have yet been drawn: the detective who asked us why our versions of the accident differed .

Object and dissent are more intense than either disagree or differ and suggest a more thoroughgoing dispute. Object most appropriately pertain to a single point of disagreement: objecting vehemently to his last inference. Dissent , on the other hand, would suggest the complete rejection of someone else’s case, both formulated in detail.

• A radical does not merely object to a few scattered instances of injustice; he dissents from a whole way of life.

Cavil and quibble pertain to the raising of petty objections to a line of thought. Cavil is the harsher of the two with its implications of ill-tempered hostility: frowning negotiators who cavilled at every new proposal simply to prolong the deadlock. Quibble may suggest the bad humour of cavil or it may refer only to a super-solemn, over-refined attention to detail that is sophistical in its triviality; scholastics quibbling over the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. Quibble , when it suggests contention, still stresses an almost legalistic pettiness: quibbling for hours about which candidate had the stronger platform. Bicker is an intensification of this sense of quibble , suggesting more hostility between the arguers, but with no lessening of the triviality inherent in the argument. Name-calling and groundless assertions, however, may be included as tenchniques of dispute: bickering about who should get up and shut the door.